No More Learning

In truth, even strong
_steady _lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning glass
chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle in
our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of
all that is false in taste or preposterous in folly.

The rage for _glitter-_because its idea has become as we before
observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract--has
led us, also, to the exaggerated employment of mirrors. We line our
dwellings with great British plates, and then imagine we have done a
fine thing. Now the slightest thought will be sufficient to convince
any one who has an eye at all, of the ill effect of numerous
looking-glasses, and especially of large ones. Regarded apart from
its reflection, the mirror presents a continuous, flat, colourless,
unrelieved surface,--a thing always and obviously unpleasant. Considered
as a reflector, it is potent in producing a monstrous and odious
uniformity: and the evil is here aggravated, not in merely direct
proportion with the augmentation of its sources, but in a ratio
constantly increasing. In fact, a room with four or five mirrors
arranged at random, is, for all purposes of artistic show, a room of
no shape at all. If we add to this evil, the attendant glitter upon
glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing
effects. The veriest bumpkin, on entering an apartment so bedizzened,
would be instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be
altogether unable to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let
the same person be led into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be
startled into an exclamation of pleasure and surprise.

It is an evil growing out of our republican institutions, that here a
man of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in
it. The corruption of taste is a portion or a pendant of the
dollar-manufacture. As we grow rich, our ideas grow rusty. It is,
therefore, not among _our _aristocracy that we must look (if at all, in
Appallachia), for the spirituality of a British _boudoir.
_But we have
seen apartments in the tenure of Americans of moderns [possibly "modest"
or "moderate"] means, which, in negative merit at least, might vie with
any of the _or-molu'd _cabinets of our friends across the water. Even
_now_, there is present to our mind's eye a small and not, ostentatious
chamber with whose decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor
lies asleep on a sofa--the weather is cool--the time is near midnight:
we will make a sketch of the room during his slumber.

It is oblong--some thirty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth--a
shape affording the best(ordinary) opportunities for the adjustment of
furniture. It has but one door--by no means a wide one--which is at one
end of the parallelogram, and but two windows, which are at the
other. These latter are large, reaching down to the floor--have deep
recesses--and open on an Italian _veranda. _Their panes are of a
crimson-tinted glass, set in rose-wood framings, more massive than
usual. They are curtained within the recess, by a thick silver tissue
adapted to the shape of the window, and hanging loosely in small
volumes. Without the recess are curtains of an exceedingly rich crimson
silk, fringed with a deep network of gold, and lined with silver tissue,
which is the material of the exterior blind. There are no cornices; but
the folds of the whole fabric (which are sharp rather than massive, and
have an airy appearance), issue from beneath a broad entablature of rich
giltwork, which encircles the room at the junction of the ceiling and
walls. The drapery is thrown open also, or closed, by means of a thick
rope of gold loosely enveloping it, and resolving itself readily into
a knot; no pins or other such devices are apparent. The colours of
the curtains and their fringe--the tints of crimson and gold--appear
everywhere in profusion, and determine the _character _of the room. The
carpet--of Saxony material--is quite half an inch thick, and is of the
same crimson ground, relieved simply by the appearance of a gold cord
(like that festooning the curtains) slightly relieved above the surface
of the _ground, _and thrown upon it in such a manner as to form a
succession of short irregular curves--one occasionally overlaying the
other. The walls are prepared with a glossy paper of a silver gray tint,
spotted with small Arabesque devices of a fainter hue of the prevalent
crimson. Many paintings relieve the expanse of paper. These are chiefly
landscapes of an imaginative cast--such as the fairy grottoes of
Stanfield, or the lake of the Dismal Swamp of Chapman.