CHAPTER III: MIRRORS, STOOLS, AND SOME NOTES ON A QUEEN ANNE BEDROOM
The mirror, at the present time, is so generally an accepted necessary of life, and so indispensable in many of its situations, that it may seem remarkable that not until the sixteenth century was it in anything like general use in England. The pleasure and interest of reflection must have been felt from the time when "the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night." Still water must have been the first mirror of the first man and woman in which they discovered their astonished faces, and where it is possible that, like Narcissus, they fell in love with their own reflections. Thus we find Eve saying in "Paradise Lost":
I thither went
And with unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank; to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem'd a second sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A shape within the wat'ry gleam appear'd,