No More Learning

In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of
their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little
sentiment beyond marbles and colours. In France, _meliora probant,
deteriora _sequuntur--the people are too much a race of gadabouts to
maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a
delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The
Chinese and most of the eastern races have a warm but inappropriate
fancy. The Scotch are _poor _decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an
indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are
_all _curtains--a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The
Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone
are preposterous.

How this happens, it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy of
blood, and having therefore as a natural, and indeed as an inevitable
thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the _display
of wealth _has here to take the place and perform the office of the
heraldic display in monarchical countries. By a transition readily
understood, and which might have been as readily foreseen, we have been
brought to merge in simple _show_ our notions of taste itself.

To speak less abstractly. In England, for example, no mere parade
of costly appurtenances would be so likely as with us, to create
an impression of the beautiful in respect to the appurtenances
themselves--or of taste as regards the proprietor:--this for the reason,
first, that wealth is not, in England, the loftiest object of ambition
as constituting a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility
of blood, confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste,
rather avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a _parvenu
_rivalry may at any time be successfully attempted.
The people _will _imitate the nobles, and the result is a thorough
diffusion of the proper feeling. But in America, the coins current being
the sole arms of the aristocracy, their display may be said, in general,
to be the sole means of the aristocratic distinction; and the populace,
looking always upward for models, are insensibly led to confound the two
entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost
of an article of furniture has at length come to be, with us, nearly
the sole test of its merit in a decorative point of view--and this test,
once established, has led the way to many analogous errors, readily
traceable to the one primitive folly.

There could be nothing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist
than the interior of what is termed in the United States--that is to
say, in Appallachia--a well-furnished apartment. Its most usual defect
is a want of keeping. We speak of the keeping of a room as we would of
the keeping of a picture--for both the picture and the room are amenable
to those undeviating principles which regulate all varieties of art; and
very nearly the same laws by which we decide on the higher merits of a
painting, suffice for decision on the adjustment of a chamber.

A want of keeping is observable sometimes in the character of the
several pieces of furniture, but generally in their colours or modes of
adaptation to use _Very _often the eye is offended by their inartistic
arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent--too uninterruptedly
continued--or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines
occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. By undue precision,
the appearance of many a fine apartment is utterly spoiled.

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.