No More Learning

Curtains are rarely well disposed, or well chosen in respect to other
decorations. With formal furniture, curtains are out of place; and an
extensive volume of drapery of any kind is, under any circumstance,
irreconcilable with good taste--the proper quantum, as well as the
proper adjustment, depending upon the character of the general effect.

Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we
still very frequently err in their patterns and colours. The soul of the
apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the
forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary
man; a good judge of a carpet _must be _a genius. Yet we have heard
discoursing of carpets, with the air "_d'un mouton qui reve," _fellows
who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of
their own _moustaches. _Every one knows that a large floor _may _have a
covering of large figures, and that a small one must have a covering
of small--yet this is not all the knowledge in the world. As
regards texture, the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the
preterpluperfect tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying
agonies. Touching pattern--a carpet should _not _be bedizzened out like
a Riccaree Indian--all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock's feathers. In
brief--distinct grounds, and vivid circular or cycloid figures, _of
no meaning, _are here Median laws. The abomination of flowers, or
representations of well-known objects of any kind, should not be
endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets,
or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this
nature should be rigidly Arabesque. As for those antique floor-cloth &
still occasionally seen in the dwellings of the rabble--cloths of huge,
sprawling, and radiating devises, stripe-interspersed, and glorious
with all hues, among which no ground is intelligible--these are but the
wicked invention of a race of time-servers and money-lovers--children
of Baal and worshippers of Mammon--Benthams, who, to spare thought
and economize fancy, first cruelly invented the Kaleidoscope, and then
established joint-stock companies to twirl it by steam.
_Glare_ is a leading error in the philosophy of American household
decoration--an error easily recognised as deduced from the perversion of
taste just specified. , We are violently enamoured of gas and of glass.
The former is totally inadmissible within doors. Its harsh and unsteady
light offends. No one having both brains and eyes will use it. A mild,
or what artists term a cool light, with its consequent warm shadows,
will do wonders for even an ill-furnished apartment. Never was a more
lovely thought than that of the astral lamp. We mean, of course,
the astral lamp proper--the lamp of Argand, with its original plain
ground-glass shade, and its tempered and uniform moonlight rays. The
cut-glass shade is a weak invention of the enemy. The eagerness with
which we have adopted it, partly on account of its _flashiness,_ but
principally on account of its _greater rest,_ is a good commentary on
the proposition with which we began. It is not too much to say, that the
deliberate employer of a cut-glass shade, is either radically deficient
in taste, or blindly subservient to the caprices of fashion. The light
proceeding from one of these gaudy abominations is unequal broken, and
painful. It alone is sufficient to mar a world of good effect in the
furniture subjected to its influence. Female loveliness, in especial, is
more than one-half disenchanted beneath its evil eye.

In the matter of glass, generally, we proceed upon false principles. Its
leading feature is _glitter--_and in that one word how much of all that
is detestable do we express!