No More Learning

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. 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.