With the increased quality of the carved woodwork manufactured, there was a proportion of illfinished and overornamented work produced; and although, as has been before observed, the manufacture of cheap marqueterie in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities was bringing the name of Dutch furniture into illrepute-still, so far as the writer's observations have gone, the Flemish woodcarver appears to have been, at the time now under consideration, ahead of his fellow craftsmen in Europe; and when in the ensuing chapter we come to notice some of the representative exhibits in the great International Competition of 1851, it will be seen that the Antwerp designer and carver was certainly in the foremost rank. In Austria, too, some good cabinet work was being carried out, M. Leistler, of Vienna, having at the time a high reputation. In Paris the house of Fourdinois was making a name which, in subsequent exhibitions, we shall see took a leading place amongst the designers and manufacturers of decorative furniture. England, it has been observed, was suffering from languor in Art industry. The excellent designs of the Adams and their school, which obtained early in the century, had been supplanted, and a meaningless rococo style succeeded the heavy imitations of French pseudoclassic furniture. Instead of, as in the earlier and more tasteful periods, when architects had designed woodwork and furniture to accord with the style of their buildings, they appear to have then, as a general rule, abandoned the control of the decoration of interiors, and the result was one which-when we examine our National furniture of half a century ago-has not left us much to be proud of, as an artistic and industrious people. Some notice has been taken of the appreciation of this unsatisfactory state of things by the Government of the time, and by the Press; and, as with a knowledge of our deficiency, came the desire and the energy to bring about its remedy, we shall see that, with the Exhibition of 1851, and the intercourse and the desire to improve, which naturally followed that great and successful effort, our designers and craftsmen profited by the great stimulus which Art and Industry then received. CHAPTER IX. FROM 1851 TO THE PRESENT TIME. THE GREAT EXHIBITION: Exhibitors and contemporary Cabinet Makers-Exhibition of 1862, London; 1867, Paris; and subsequently-Description of Illustrations- Fourdinois, Wright, and Mansfield-The South Kensington Museum-Revival of Marquetry-Comparison of Present Day with that of a Hundred Years ago- ?stheticism-Traditions-TradesUnionism-The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society-Independence of Furniture-Present Fashions-Writers on Design-Modern Furniture in other Countries-Concluding Remarks. n the previous chapter attention has been called to the success of the National Exhibition in Paris of 1849; in the same year the competition of our manufacturers at Birmingham gave an impetus to Industrial Art in England, and there was about this time a general forward movement, with a desire for an International Exhibition on a grand scale.