conscious atonement for the lack of furniture and light and beauty about them. Detail 'told' against the dark walls it never 'tells' against pale ones. They were in fact the only furniture and attraction within the massive granite walls. The attention was concentrated on the people, and the walls were (as they should be) the background to set the people off. Now, when an ordinary dwelling-house is handsomer, cleaner, and more comfort. able than the royal palace was in 1400, we make ourselves subservient to the rooms in which we live--we are content to be always secondary (sometimes imperceptible) objects in our glittering saloons which we cannot outglitter. Or in the endeavour to eclipse the bad taste of our mural decoration with the worse taste of our ignorant self-adornment from the sheer necessity of being visible, we become conspicuous without grace, and expensive without beauty.

Old and New Colours.

The colours long contemned as old-fashioned'the colours in vogue before the present century—have been generally more beautiful and more becoming than any we now have. Why? The truth of the matter is,

This is true in another way of the beautiful rooms decorated by artistic firms. People are apt to forget that a room is but a background.

a colour may be too pure: and of late our manufacturers, urged on by the vulgar craving for gaudiness, have so much advanced in colour-distilling and dyeing that our modern colours are hideous through their extreme purity. Hence colours faded by age are often more beautiful than in their pristine freshness. The old-fashioned blue, which had a dash of yellow in it, and which looks sadly faded against the fashionable staring blues, was one of the most exquisite hues ever worn: so was the warm dun yellow we see in the old masters' pictures so was the soft, brownish crimson. The same remark applies to Oriental colours. The old Indian and Persian manufactures, which will never grow old, look for ever perfect and grand, and this is not only due to the wondrous Oriental feeling for combining colours-it is partly due to the imperfection of the colours they used. The reds are chiefly dull, the blues greenish, the white yellowish or grey, the black half-brown: this may be noticed in any old Indian carpet or shawl. Unhappily, the same undiscriminating demand for cheap work which demoralised art in England is demoralising the Oriental markets, since it has become the fashion to ransack them; and it is becoming more and more difficult to procure the old subdued mixtures. In the goods they fabricate for the French and English markets, they are beginning to use the cheap imported European dyes

although they still, through sheer ignorance, adhere to the old patterns. Soon they may give place to the modern bad ones, and we shall have nothing better from the East than we can make at home, as far as harmony of tints and poetry of design are concerned.

CHAPTER IV.

Colours in Furniture.

F course every colour can be made beautiful and

becoming to the face by being cunningly

arranged and relieved. It may always be

done by mixing it inte another colour. You may tone down a raw colour with net. You may select a colour which partakes of another, i.e. is not too pure—even a shot colour-many shots are most beautiful—or you may put other colours with it. Do not place blue and yellow together in pure colours; let the blue be a pale yellowblue. Do not place orange and yellow, or pink and scarlet, near together, unless they are intentionally mingled in one mass; and it requires some skill to do this well.

The best way to educate yourself is to look at models of colouring. Stothard had a collection of butterflies, which taught him many things about the mixtures and contrasts of colours. Or go to the

flowers. You can have no better tutors; all the books on art and manuals of colour will never teach as well as they.

In a flower containing strong contrasts, such as purple and white, e.g., you will generally find a third tint placed between the two, in however small a quantity. A warm colour usually divides two cold colours, or a cold colour two warm ones, or the two are mingled into a third tint at the junction. For instance, see this tulip, whose petals half-way down are of the brightest red and the base of the calyx white; these colours are softened into one another by a streak of purest ultramarine, and so perfect is this combination that one can conceive nothing beyond it. See this sweet-william blossomthe centre white, or nearly, the edges darkest crimson. There is no blue between them, but the uniting colour is pink. You can distinctly trace the narrow band of bluepink, which takes away all hardness from the junction. Orange is mixed into white with pale yellow, or pink, or green veins.

Blue flowers seldom lack a touch of warmer colourlilac, pink, or yellow-to relieve their coldness; white ones are softened with yellow, greenish, or pinkish shadows or veins. In fact, as a result of the mingling of many hues into each other for a perfect whole, I am very doubtful whether every flower has not in it every