Panelling, such as was placed in inferior rooms or passages, differed little from Elizabeth's time to that of the last of the Stuarts, except in an increase in the superficial area of the panels themselves. A feature of great beauty in certain Elizabethan panelled rooms may be found in the decorative pilasters which divide the panels at intervals. Londoners who do not wish to travel afield need go no farther than Canonbury Tower to study some of the finest specimens of this feature which can be found anywhere. This till recently neglected building is said to have been a portion of the mansion erected by the celebrated Prior Bolton, who ruled the destinies of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, from 1509 to 1532. About the year 1599 the property passed into the hands of Sir John Spencer, who embellished and improved the building, and to his taste we no doubt owe the two magnificent panelled apartments which still remain. Both of these have fine carved fireplaces, and one of them is fitted throughout with magnificent quartered panelling, embellished with pilasters, adorned with the most exquisite arabesque strapwork, the bases of the columns bearing masks in relief, with decorative scrolls.

Goldsmith for a time occupied the first floor of Canonbury Tower, and it is said that here, in the lower oak room, he wrote 'The Deserted Village.'

The fireplaces in Elizabeth's days became one of the principal features in an apartment, and the superb pillared and panelled overmantels which adorned them must be familiar to everyone who is acquainted with old English mansions of the period. Perhaps the nearest approach to the Elizabethan overmantel in earlier days is the elaborate fireplace of Sir Antony Wingfield's mansion (now the Tankard Inn) at Ipswich, removed during the thirties to Holywells. Extending from mantel to ceiling, pillared, and with deeply-recessed panels, these imposing productions sometimes possess two stories or tiers of arches, enclosing shields, helmets, and lambrequins, carved in bold relief, as at Levens Hall, Worcestershire. In others a central panel of large dimensions exhibits the shield with its accompaniments even more boldly-carved, flanked on each side by canopies in the form of a classic arch, underneath which appear figures in a semi-romanesque costume. A good example of this kind exists in the state room at that well-known old-world mansion, Chastleton House, Gloucestershire. Again, the varieties of this superb feature are so diverse and many that a good-sized volume could be written upon the subject of Elizabethan fireplaces alone.

The influx of wealth in Elizabeth's time was so remarkable that many houses of the middle classes contained fireplaces and fittings modelled on the lines of those just described, but of smaller dimensions. At a modest little dwelling in Fore Street, Ipswich, immediately opposite the famous Neptune Tavern, recently mentioned, once dwelt Thomas Eldred, one of the buccaneer captains of the Elizabethan period. This navigator is said to have sailed round the world with his friend Cavendish, also a resident of Ipswich - a voyage duly recorded by paintings which appear upon three panels of a fine carved overmantel in the front room of the house. These represent severally Thomas Eldred himself, with a telescope applied to his eye, the world, and a full-rigged ship, presumably the vessel in which he made his voyages. On the central panel, beneath the globe, are these lines:

'He that travels ye world about

Seeth God's wonders and God's works.

Thomas Eldred traveled ye world about

And went out of Plimouth ye 21 of July, 1586,

And arrived in Plimouth again the

9 of September, 1588.'

The fireplace is freely carved with the guilloche and vine-leaf, and the painted panels are separated by pairs of detached columns. Similar pairs of columns flank the outside of the overmantel, resting upon fluted pilasters, which constitute the jambs of the fireplace. A legend is current in the vicinity that the interior of this room once formed part of the fittings of Eldred's cabin in the ship in which he sailed round the world. Whether this be true or not, it is a fact that the paintings must have been executed some time after the fireplace was made, for beneath the surface of the paint the indications of geometrical inlay can be seen. The panelling of the room is of plain character, with a frieze of oblong jewel-moulding immediately beneath the cornice. These oblong-shaped projections formed a source of wonder to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and I was assured by one very intelligent old lady that they were supposed to represent sausages which Thomas Eldred and his family had eaten.

The room and its fittings are a fair specimen of what, no doubt, might be seen in many of the dwellings of the middle classes of the period.*

* I am informed that this most interesting interior was transported some two years ago to Holywells. Its removal brought to light some curious fresco decoration dating from the time of Henry VIII., a portion of which was saved, and is now exhibited at Christchurch Hall.

A singular feature connected with the panelling of this period, only to be found in the houses of the great and wealthy, was a sort of excrescence jutting out into the room and forming a sort of small lobby, which enclosed the main door of the room, and was itself provided with a door. Some of these lobbies were elaborately sculptured with figures and pinnacles, as at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire, and Bradfield, Devon. A very excellent example also can be seen incorporated in the inlaid room from Sizergh Castle, Westmorland, which has found a home in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was obviously adopted as a device to add to the comfort of the principal rooms by protecting the inmates against draughts. Large apartments of this period were often provided with a fixed seat running round the whole length of the walls, and supported by numerous pillar legs, and an apartment thus fitted was spoken of in those days as being 'benched aboute,'and in old specifications this term will not infrequently be found.

The great hall of Ockwells Manor House supplies a very good instance of an apartment furnished in this manner, while at Crow-hurst Place, Surrey, are the remains of a yet earlier example dating from the commencement of the sixteenth century.

During the seventeenth century the oblong top panel still continued to be used when panelling was only carried partly up the wall, but it was seldom decorated with carving. There is little doubt that the custom of wainscotting the principal apartments with wood continued in some country houses down to a comparatively late date, but there is also evidence that, in accordance with newer ideas, the material, whether solid English oak or imported deal, was subjected to the coats of light paint with which our ancestors were so lavish. The grooved stile was also more in evidence, according with the Dutch traditions which our second Charles brought from Holland.

The fashion which arose in Wren's time of wainscotting apartments with huge upright classic panels, raised from the surface of the wall, and edged with heavy ogee mouldings, does not belong to the province of this work, for such fittings were mainly composed of materials other than oak. The fireplace, as the seventeenth century progressed, though often possessing a lofty overmantel, became less elaborate and pretentious, its importance as a feature of domestic decoration being considerably less than that of its Elizabethan prototype.

FIREPLACE FROM LIME STREET, CITY.

Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, middle of seventeenth century.

The fireplaces from Lime Street, which formerly decorated a City merchant's house, and have now been deposited in the Victoria and Albert Museum, are highly interesting examples of the art of an age when merchant princes were content to live over their counting-houses. A very beautiful and characteristic oak mantelpiece of the latter part of the seventeenth century was formerly to be seen in an old house at Deptford, reputed in the neighbourhood to have once formed part of Sayes'Court, the residence of Evelyn, Peter the Great, and Admiral Benbow. This mantelpiece, which is richly carved with the acanthus-leaf in the Corinthian style on two bold members, still exists, though in a somewhat curtailed state, at a house in Steele's Road, Haverstock Hill. It is really astonishing how many fine examples of a date immediately subsequent to the Great Fire of London still remain in out-of-the-way corners in the City of London. To those who wish to study domestic fittings of Charles II.'s reign there is no finer field for investigation than the interiors which still exist in the intricate purlieus of the City.