WHEN the Romans took possession of Gaul they had to contend with a strong, intelligent, and numerous population, divided into a multitude of tribes, the civilisation of which could only be called barbarous when compared with the extraordinary development of Italy. In his "Commentaries" Caesar recognises this civilisation, and does not fail to acknowledge the skill of the conquered tribes in the construction of fortified cities or the wisdom of their legislators; but, unfortunately, he is silent on the details of their domestic life, which must have been familiar to every one in his day. Not a trace, not so much as a memory, now remains of Gallic furniture; even conjecture is forbidden in view of the fact that the very language spoken from the English Channel to the Mediterranean no more than twenty centuries ago has become a mystery; and in the tombs that have been opened nothing but a few weapons and jewels have been found. These relics, however, confirm the belief in the skill of the Gauls in working metal, whilst the tradition that they were the first coopers points to their having been clever at turning and shaping wood.

The sudden and apparently complete swallowing up of Gallic civilisation in Latin manners and customs, makes it impossible to begin the study of French furniture before the earliest owners of the soil had become so merged in their conquerors as to form with them but a single race - the Gallo-Romans. At the same time may be said to have been evolved the first germ of the essentially French character so admirably adapted to art development, which was the outcome of the fusion between barbarian audacity and imagination and Latin sense of proportion and adaptability.

Less than a century after the conquest the conical roofed mud huts of the Celts were replaced by villas built and furnished in imitation of those of Italy, of which Gaul was now a province, and the sole aim of their designers was to copy the lavish luxury of the masters who had reduced the whole world, as well as Gaul, to subjection. Unbridled indulgence in the pleasures of the appetite became as much the fashion with the wealthy citizens of Roman Gaul as with the patricians of the capital - dining-tables were inlaid with costly marqueterie, rich furs and embroidered cushions adorned the couches on which the guests reclined. A fifth-century Bishop of Lyons, Sidonius Apollinaris, has left us a description in elegant verse of a fete at the house of one of his contemporaries, and his indulgent Christian spirit displays nothing but admiration for the luxurious accessories of the feast. "The end of the day approaches," he says, "let wine, dancing, and merrymaking delight its closing hours. Here are couches draped with purple, revellers eagerly drinking purple nectar. Behold ! all is luxury; everything is glittering; the eye is charmed at every turn.

Here is furniture from Asia, there furniture from Greece; everywhere are sculptures and paintings, sanguinary hunting scenes in which no life is lost, groups of wounded men where not a drop of blood is shed. It is indeed a pleasure to wander amongst the masses of bloom drooping from the plants in the alabaster urns, to yield the body to the seductions of the graceful and languid dance, and to mimic the trembling limbs of the Bacchantes overcome by wine ! . . . Here blooms the cytisus, the lily, and the jonquil. . . . Already the incense brought from its native land of Arabia is burning in the swinging lamps, its smoke rising up to the gorgeous roof! . . "

At the very time when the Bishop was thus celebrating the delights of this refined, but effeminate life, Roman Gaul was already being invaded by the barbarians of the East and North. These were the Germani, of whom the Franci, or Franks, were but a tribe; the Burgundii, succeeded by the Huns; the Avars, and the Goths. Fierce warriors, ignorant of art and intellectual culture, they had but the savage passion for brilliant-looking objects, such as precious metals - which, by the way, they knew how to work, probably through their Asiatic traditions - and though Attila himself chose to affect simplicity in the presence of the Roman ambassadors by eating out of a wooden platter and sitting on a simple stool, the Avar chiefs who succeeded him used couches of embossed gold with silken draperies, which served them alike as beds and thrones. The Goths, especially, amassed an enormous treasure, alluded to by Gregory of Tours and Fredegarius, which, amongst other valuables, included a table formed of a single emerald encircled with three rows of pearls, and upheld by sixty-five feet of solid gold encrusted with precious stones, the total value of which was estimated at five hundred thousand pieces of gold.

The ravages committed by these hordes, who flung themselves upon the Roman Empire, suffering as it then was from an excess of luxury, were far less destructive than is generally supposed. The Iconoclasts who, with ferocious delight, broke to pieces works of art were but a small minority of degraded tribes. The greater number of the invading hosts had indeed a certain technical skill of their own that was by no means to be despised, as proved by the jewellery that has during the last fifty years been dug up all over Europe; they pillaged a great deal more than they destroyed, and often, with some crude notion of religion, they enriched the churches of France and Italy with their plunder. It must not be forgotten that Attila had his own portrait painted in a palace at Milan, and that Theodoric appointed a magistrate whose special business it was to look after the preservation of the masterpieces of antiquity. The barbarians were really ambitious of continuing to live in the luxurious style of the Romans, but in their coarseness and ignorance they only recognised the external evidences of that luxury, without comprehending that the source of its refined delights was the intellectual culture of the Latin race.