On first doing up a house, keep as many rooms as you can plainly whitewashed ('white distemper' it is called), but see that it is white, and not mixed with black, blue, or yellow, such as painters delight in using. I think everything looks well against a white wall. Covering a wall with coarse canvas and then distempering it gives a variety to the surface. Some people think white walls unbecoming. I cannot agree with this. What suits the rose and the tulip as a background ought to suit a pretty woman in her pretty clothes. In a white room dark furniture never looks heavy (not even the darkest oak), and light furniture never looks poor. But white rooms must be kept clean, as ceilings are. This necessity is a great merit, and renewing is not expensive. [If staircases or passages are white-washed, a dado, about a yard deep up the side of the staircase and along the passage, of frilled cretonne, twilled red calico, or anything cheap, is an excellent way of protecting the wall from all the many injuries that happen to it. If you like, you can have one such dado for winter and one for summer, and they can be washed or cleaned. They look best frilled onto a thin lath of wood which pulls out. Rings are sewn on the back for hanging the curtain onto nails or hooks screwed into the wall at intervals.] If the wall is soft, another thin lath of wood must be nailed to it to hold the screws.

In a white room a small piece of good drapery or old leather hung on the wall looks well, or even a few yards of very superior paper may be put in one place-between windows, over a chimney-piece, behind a picture, above a table, or under a bookcase. This form of decoration was the common one in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was, in fact, the way in which tapestry came to be used. In the old French chateaux of Touraine the hooks that held these draperies, silks from Italy, and no doubt many other things, are still to be seen in the walls. As the French Court moved from chateau to chateau, all this material moved with them.

If bookcases can be made to order, they are much better raised a certain height on the wall. This is more convenient, as grubbing on the floor for the book one wants is very tiresome. Besides, in this way you can have the large books at the top, with a wide shelf above them, and the small ones below, the shelves gradually diminishing both in height and depth from the wall. Mr. Morris advocates, in his lectures, the painting of deal; the only other way of treating it is simply to oil it. Mr. Morris, I think, says nothing about painting the floors. But that seems to me the best solution; at any rate, for three feet round the room-red, green, black, and above all white as often as you like, especially for bedrooms. Nothing is so clean, the paint wants no scrubbing and no soda; tepid water and a cloth make everything as clean as new. Staining, though a little cheaper, wears less well, will not wash, and looks common. Indian matting and felt look well in the country, but are not so clean in London. Both collect the black dust, and the former cannot be taken up. You want to be really rich to have polished floors of oak or teak. English housemaids cannot clean them, abroad it is always done by men. In London it has to be done by an upholsterer two or three times a year.

If economy is an object in furnishing, one of the best ways of reducing the outlay in bed-rooms is by dispensing with the modern washing-stands. The old-fashioned ones are often too small for comfort; our ancestors cleaned themselves with little room and less water. A large unvarnished deal table with the legs painted to suit the room is what I recommend. For cheapness it can be covered with white oil-cloth, nailed down; though I prefer a thick white dimity cloth, which can be washed as often as necessary. For a luxurious washing-table, plain coloured square tiles, sunk into a bed of cement and held firm by a metal band, make a delightful surface. A great addition both to comfort and tidiness in all bed-rooms is to have a small or large cupboard, or curtained shelves (for bottles, etc.) above the washing-stand. A couple of shelves at the head of the bed is the best place for a bookshelf in a bed-room. It is such a pleasure, morning or night, to be able to reach, without having to get out of bed, the book that suits one's mood.

Modern London builders have a most irritating way of repeating, in house after house, the most obvious defects. One of the worst of these is the bath: a large tin surface indifferently painted, which is quickly injured by the hot water, surrounded by a mahogany rim, the varnish of which is spotted and marked by every accessory necessary to the bath. One can hardly imagine anything more inappropriate. Doulton has invented a glazed earthenware bath which obviates all these objections, and would be more luxurious if the floor of the bath-room were raised nearly to the height of its rim; the steps to reach this raised floor could be outside the room, or inside, according to the hanging of the door. One of the minor luxuries of life, often not found in the largest houses, is to have really hot water when you expect it. I have found that large cosies-the shape of tea-cosies-to go over the hot-water cans (one for the little can and one for the big), easily bring this luxury within the reach of everybody. They are made of chintz, or of any stuff that comes handy and suits the room, lined with sateen to tone with or contrast with the outside, and thickly wadded. If the water is put in really hot, and the cosies are thick and large enough to cover the can entirely, the water will keep hot till the morning. This, of course, is doubly useful when there are no fires.

With all my recommendations about buying secondhand furniture, of course I do not mean to include bedding. I am old-fashioned enough to think that mattresses had always better come, though more expensive, from the best shops. If my general advice is to furnish simply, this applies doubly to nurseries and bed-rooms. In fact, these rooms should be of such a kind that if the surgeon or nurse entered them with a view to an operation, they would wish nothing altered-distempered walls, white or coloured, grave or gay, as suits the taste; no carpets going into the corners, but broad margins of painted wood, white is the best. 'Oh, it shows the dirt so!' says the upholsterer or builder. 'so much the better,' should the owner of the house answer; 'the dirt shown on white is harmless and clean compared to the dirt hidden by dark colours.'The curtains should be of the smallest and simplest kind, hung on a brass or iron rod, merely to keep out light or to make warmth; they should never reach to the ground, unless the window does.'

It is a serviceable and clean plan to sew strips of holland or chintz, which can be removed and washed, on to the edge of the mattresses; this prevents the housemaid's hands from dirtying them. I remember the day when all beds were covered with what are called counterpanes, which were even left on at night. But these now are universally acknowledged to be unwholesome, and, for the daytime, they have been superseded by some coloured coverlid. I like this coverlid, which keeps the blankets clean by day, and is folded up by night, to be the handsomest feature in the room, though its material may vary from the cheapest twill or cretonne to the richest needlework or damask-silk, old or modern. The walls can always be covered gradually by framed pictures, photographs, or prints of all kinds. In a nursery, the choice of these photographs may make an impression for life, artistic or the contrary. A young man once said to me that in travelling in Italy one of the chief joys he felt in visiting the famous galleries was the recognition of a picture that had been an old familiar friend as a framed photograph at home. He added that, if ever he had children, he thought one of the best decorations for a nursery would be a dado made of photographs, of various sizes, of some of the masterpieces of the world. The difficulty of this would be that nurseries must be easily cleaned and renewed, and I think the photographs to form the dado would have to be stuck on to thick pasteboard or thin wood.

I would allow all young people, both boys and girls, as much as possible to do the decorating and furnishing of their own rooms, limiting them, of course, to the sum intended to be spent. Taste in decorating, as in all else, is a constant cause of difference, and what every person objects to most is what is to them old-fashioned-that is, what has immediately preceded their own day.

A detail of family life, but not at all an unimportant one in my estimation, is the providing of a large, firm, folding table in the general sitting-room. It can be kept outside or in a corner of the room, and should never remain open during the day, but be brought out nightly when the lamps are lit and the curtains are drawn. This plan enables every member of the family to have room for separate employment. Everyone knows how crowded the permanent tables become in an habitually used sitting-room. The use of an empty table was first suggested to my mind by some remarks made by Goethe to Eckermann in the 'Conversations.' He strongly recommends bringing out any good books or pictures that you may happen to have to show your guests. It is impossible to do this with any comfort without a good roomy table on which to spread them. Showing books to children of different ages often provides an excellent topic for conversation, and even, I might say, for instruction; only this, I am afraid, sounds so very priggish.

A distressing feature of modern civilisation is the utter waste, both in town and country, of the precious rain-water that runs off our houses. It will be argued that in London it would be black; but it is not very difficult to remedy this-sufficiently, at any rate, for use in washing. In the country it is priceless. No well-cared-for baby ought ever to be washed in anything but rain-water; and yet, rather than make tanks, rich people, who will buy every luxury, get their water (which in nine cases out of ten is as hard and full of chalk as it can be) from the nearest water company. Rain-water is even more essential for the plants than for the baby. I was told last year by a good gardener, who had been peculiarly successful in growing the rare and beautiful Table Mountain Orchid, Disa grandiflora, that he attributed his success entirely to keeping it very moist, but never allowing one drop of water to go near it that was not rain-water. This is the case, in a minor degree, with many other greenhouse and stove plants.