"This is why some of us can only bear scientific books-though dry, they are true so far as the writer has yet discovered; or books of avowed fiction, which do not pretend to be other. Our sentiment is put on like our dress; it is not even skin-deep, much less heart-deep.

"Covetousness and unbelief so spoil all our art, that we cannot revere art as father of our fashion, which is an epidemic rather than a generation. The study of fashion is the epidemiology of art.

"There is no repose in modern 'artistic' houses; this is the defect of even the best of them, those filled with really good things; they have too varied interest, and require the mind to be perpetually astir. There is no due subordination of parts; nor breadth, as of the air, the desert, or the sea; one feels as in a wood, bewildered by play of tracery all over, and fretted light and shade-things lovely if occasionally enjoyed, but we have them to weariness.

"Toujours perdrix' is our upholsterers' motto, and that of the gatherers of these pantechnica. They run riot in rattle-trap; they quarrel over old china and other 'loot,' while their rooms are filled to bursting with sideboard appendages, and present the aspect of a broker's shop. Every corner is brought out of its natural retirement by being crammed with shiny ware and lustre, gilding and patterned broidery; every chair is cushioned, shawled, and covered with

counterpanes, as if it were a chair-bed made up to accommodate an extra guest, for whom there was no room but the drawing-room."

"Sometimes it marks a chair as dangerous,' or not meant to sit upon," said Anima Gay. "It would come down if it were, being really a folding or sprawling chair."

"The small white boudoir in the Pitti Palace is eminently uni and restful. Many of us know how its pearly charm of whiteness soothes us after the pictures' glow. This should be the influence of a room to spend calm, charmèd hours in at home. Neither should the figures become mere accessories, as they are in too many pictures as well as rooms, where the motive of the painter is palpably to 'wire in' the bit of bric-a-brac he has just picked up. Flowers are more visible than leaves: we in our dun draperies are half invisible."

SPEARE.

HE difference between the tasteful furnishing of Queen Anne's time and its counterfeit in our own will be best explained by a saying of Lord Chesterfield.

In

Observe

writing to Philip, now making the grand tour, he says he must consider the countries he passes through "classically and politically, not 'knicknackically.' Do not be a virtuoso of small wares. where the man of taste ends and the mere curiositymonger begins." Apply these sensible maxims to the next tour taken by any one of us, and we shall gain a breadth of culture and result of taste that will perfectly astonish us. This shows (among other things), first, that men of taste were distinguished from

curiosity-mongers; with us a curiosity-monger is looked upon as a man of taste. Next, that things were treated as subordinate to persons; and they were so when cultured persons had fine manners enough to command the respect that they paid to others. Courtliness is more than ever the mark of a gentleman now that any boor can buy learning, as well as manners, at 2d. a week.

We carry our contempt for graces of deportment to the verge of rudeness. With our loss of selfrespect, as evinced by our manners and our dress, we have lost respect for others. Jack's as good as his master, so we dress and think on a level with Jack.

on our manners.

One thing, with all our fulness, is wanting to our plenishing, and the want has a greatly damaging effect This is real value, intrinsic value, a worth that we can learn and can respect; such as is furnished by the patient finish of an honest worker; the mental power of a great one, a man who can concentrate years of practised skill into a sketch, so different from the pert slap-dash of his imitators, who pass his best qualities unrecognized and parody his manner. We have no respect for the cheap and tawdry trinkets with which we fill our rooms, for they are not things into which any breath of a noble soul has entered.

But even more than furniture is dress the governor of our manners. In the embroidered satin and lace

ruffles of Queen Anne's time one could not be other than courtly; in the rich, stiff cloth of gold of the Tudors, no other than stately; in the panoply of an carlier period, less than nothing if not warlike. Even in our evening broadcloth a man looks polite. In our tourist suits we may look active, sensible-or ruffianly, as often as anything else: we need be greatly careful of our manners to compensate for the rudeness of our outward man.

The perfect fit, however, of our clothing is an excellence, and so is its elastic adaptability to all our movements, and where the man himself is worth seeing, his clothes are unremarked; but in many instances all we see of a man as indicating his nature are his bad manners and his short pipe. Fine manners (courtliness) will revive like the use of fine lace, as a luxury to be admired with discrimination and proximity, because the coarse wares will be held no luxury at all, since clumsiness and trumpery may be met with anywhere. On the same principle, we shall have for reading either poetry or telegrams, either the bald fact or the joyous picture; for clothing, crash or fine lace, homespun or embroidery, for use on two sets of occasions;-the walking-tour dress is as useful and comfortable for home life, while for weddings and great occasions we shall produce our best, and care for its being sumptuous. There need be no middling nor no sham, hence no shame, since