There is, however, one point upon which I own myself a little sore; and in which, I do think, superfluities are carried to a somewhat vicious excess. The point to which I allude, and I beg the patience of the reader, is the vast increase of superfluities, which of late years have become primary necessaries in the appointment of a well-furnished house. Here, indeed, is a revolution; a revolution more formidable than the French and the American emancipation put together. We all remember the time when one tea-table, two or three card-tables, a pier glass, a small detachment of chairs, with two armed corporals to command them, on either side the fire-place, with a square piece of carpet in the centre of the floor, made a very decent display in the drawing, or (as it was then preposterously called) the dining-room. As yet, rugs for the hearth were not; and twice a day did Betty go upon her knees to scour the marble and uncovered slab. In the bedrooms of those days, a narrow slip of carpet round the bed was the maximum of woollen integument allowed for protecting the feet of the midnight wanderer from his couch; and, in the staircases of the fairest mansions, a like slip meandered down the centre of the flight of steps. At that time, curtains rose and fell in a line parallel to the horizon, after the simple plan of the green siparium of our theatres; and, being strictly confined to the windows, they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door. No golden serpents then twisted their voluminous folds across the entire breadth of the room; nor did richly-carved cods' heads and shoulders, under the denomination of dolphins, or glittering spread eagles, with a brass ring in their mouths, support fenestral draperies, which rival the display of a Waterloo-house calico-vender. Thus far, I admit, the change is an improvement. Nay, I could away with ladders to go to bed withal, though many a time and oft they have broken my shins. I would not either object to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room--"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"--but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, or both of them, very fit and becoming; but it cannot be right to make a broker's shop of your best apartment. An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a _nécessaire_ for