Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/235

 Rh and purses represent but the first beginnings of that misdirected energy which for the best part of a century embellished English homes. The truly accomplished young lady in Miss More's "Cœlebs" paints flowers and shells, draws ruins, gilds and varnishes wood, is an adept in Japan work, and stands ready to begin modelling, etching, and engraving. The great principle of ornamental art was the reproduction of an object—of any object—in an alien material. The less adapted this material was to its purpose, the greater the difficulties it presented to the artist, the more precious became the monstrous masterpiece. To take a plain sheet of paper and draw a design upon it was ignominious in its simplicity; but to construct the same design out of paper spirals, rolling up some five hundred slips with uniform tightness, setting them on end, side by side, and painting or gilding the tops,—that was a feat of which any young lady might be proud. It was so uncommonly hard to do, it ought to have been impossible. Cutting paper with fine sharp scissors and a knife was taught in schools (probably in Miss Monflathers's school, though