15. We have no certain evidence that carpets were known in the civilized periods of antiquity. They appear to have originated in Persia, at a time comparatively modern, and to have spread in a gradual manner towards the West. They were unknown in England in the reign of Elizabeth; for it was then the fashion to strew the floor with hay and rushes. Even the presence-chamber of this princess was covered in this manner. The manufacture of carpets was not commenced in England, until the year 1750. They are now extensively manufactured in the United States. [Illustration: CHAIR MAKER.] THE CHAIR-MAKER. 1. The chair was invented at so early a period, that its origin cannot now be ascertained. It was used by all the civilized nations of antiquity; and some of their patterns for this species of furniture have been revived, with some modifications, in modern times; for example, a stool for sitting at the piano, now called the X, is the lower part of a chair used in the Roman empire near two thousand years ago. The seat and back were stuffed with some soft elastic substance. 2. The seats used by the barbarous conquerors of the Roman empire, hardly deserve the name of chairs, as they commonly consisted of little or nothing more than a stool with three or four legs. Even the great Alfred, who swayed the sceptre of England in the latter part of the ninth century, possessed nothing approaching nearer to a chair than a three-legged stool made of oak timber. This species of seat was at length improved into a chair by the addition of another leg and a back. 3. The next step in the art of chair-making was to cover the seats with cloth, and to stuff them with some kind of wadding. The material of which the frames were made was oak; and for a long period, they were exceedingly heavy and inconvenient. The armed-chair is said to have been contrived by an alderman of Cripplegate. Such chairs, however, were in use among the ancient Greeks and Romans. 4. Our old-fashioned chair, with four upright posts, several horizontal rounds and slats, together with wooden splints or flags for the bottom, is comparatively modern, although it is impossible to state the period of its introduction. Very few of any other kind were used in the United States, until near the beginning of the present century. 5. The Windsor chair seems to have been first used for a rural seat in the grounds about Windsor castle, England; whence its name. It was originally constructed of round wood, with the bark on; but the chair-makers soon began to make them of turned wood, for the common purposes of house-keeping. We cannot learn that any were made in this country before the close of the revolution, in 1783.