Page:Burton's The Gentleman's Magazine 1840 volume 6.djvu/268

244 vivid circular figures, of no meaning, are here Median laws. The abomination of flowers, or representations of well known objects of any kind should never be endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or paper-hangings, or ottoman in coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque. Those antique floor-cloths which are still seen occasionally in the dwellings of the rabble—cloths of huge, sprawling and radiating devices, stripe-interspersed, and glorious with all hues, among which no ground is intelligible—are but the wicked invention of a race of time servers and money lovers—children of Baal and worshippers of Mammon—men who, to save trouble of thought and exercise of fancy, first cruelly invented the Kaleidoscope, and then established a patent company to twirl it by steam.

Glare is a leading error in the philosophy of American household decoration—an error easily recognized 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 is positively offensive. No man 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. I mean, of course, the astral lamp proper, and do not wish to be misunderstood—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 cost, is a good commentary upon the proposition with which I began. It is not too much to say that the deliberate employer of a cut-glass shade is a person 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! Flickering, unquiet lights are sometimes pleasing—to children and idiots always so—but in the embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth even strong steady lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-litten, and without shade, which dangle by night in our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of false taste, as so many concentrations of preposterous folly.

The rage for glitter—because its idea has become, as I before observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract—has led 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, colorless, unrelieved surface—a thing always unpleasant, and obviously so. Considered as a reflector it is potent in producing a monstrous and odious uniformity—and the evil is here aggravated in no 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 artistical show, a room of no shape at all. If we add to this the attendant glitter upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing effects. The veriest bumpkin, not addle-headed, upon entering an apartment so bedizened, would be instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be altogether unable to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let the same individual be led into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be startled into an exclamation of surprise and of pleasure.

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 and 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 the United States, for the spirituality of a British boudoir. But I have seen apartments in the tenure of Americans—men of exceedingly moderate means yet rara aves of good taste—which, in negative merit at least, might vie with any of the or-molued cabinets of our friends across the water.

Even now there is present to my mind's eye a small and not ostentatious chamber with whose decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor lies asleep upon a sofa—the weather is cool—the time is near midnight—I will make a sketch of the room ere he awakes. It is oblong—some thirty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth—a shape affording the best opportunities for the adjustment of furniture. It has but one door, which is at one end of the parrallelogram [sic], and but two windows, which are at the other. These latter are large, reaching downwards to the floor, are situated in deep recesses, and open upon an Italian veranda. Their panes are of a crimson-tinted glass, set in rose-wood framings, of a kind somewhat broader than usual. They are curtained, within the recess, by a thick silver tissue, adapted to the shape of the window and hanging loosely, but having no volumes. Without the recess are curtains of an exceedingly rich crimson silk, fringed with a deep network of gold, and lined with the silver tissue which forms 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 gilt-work