Simplicity of Furniture among the Gauls and Franks.--Introduction of costly taste in articles of Furniture of the Seventh Century.--Arm-chair of Dagobert.--Round Table of King Artus.--Influence of the Crusades.--Regal Banquet in the time of Charles V.--Benches.--Sideboards.--Dinner Services.--Goblets.--Brassware.--Casks.--Lighting.--Beds.--Carved Wood Furniture.--Locksmith’s Work.--Glass and Mirrors.--Room of a Feudal Seigneur.--Costliness of Furniture used for Ecclesiastical Purposes.--Altars.--Censers.--Shrines and Reliquaries.--Gratings and Iron-mountings. We shall be readily believed when we assert that the furniture used by our remote ancestors, the Gauls, was of the most rude simplicity. A people essentially addicted to war and hunting,--at the best, agriculturists,--having for their temples the forests, for their dwellings huts formed out of turf and thatched with straw and branches, would naturally be indifferent to the form and description of their furniture. Then succeeded the Roman Conquest. Originally, and long subsequent to the formation of their warlike republic, the Romans had also lived in contempt of display, and even in ignorance of the conveniences of life. But when they had subjugated Gaul, and had carried their victorious arms to the confines of the world, they by degrees appropriated whatever the manners and habits of the conquered nations disclosed to them of refined luxury, material progress, and ingenious devices for comfort. Thus, the Romans brought with them into Gaul what they elsewhere had acquired. Again, when, in their turn, the semi-barbarous hordes of Germany and of the Northern steppes invaded the Roman empire, these new conquerors did not fail to accommodate themselves instinctively to the social condition of the vanquished. This, briefly stated, is an explanation--we admit, rather concise--of the transition connecting the characteristics of the society of olden days with those of modern society. Society in the Middle Ages--that social epoch which may be compared to the state of a decrepid and worn-out old man, who, after a long, dull torpor awakes to new life, like an active and vigorous child--society in the Middle Ages inherited much from preceding times, though, to a certain extent, they were disconnected. It transformed, perhaps; and it perfected, rather than invented; but it displayed in its works a genius so peculiar that we generally recognise in it a real creation. Proposing rapidly to pursue our archæological and literary course through a twofold period of birth and revival, we cannot indulge the belief that we shall succeed in exhibiting our sketches in a light the best adapted to their effect. However, we will make the attempt, and, the frame being given, will do our best to fill in the picture.