THOSE sated and out of patience with ornament, whether mismanaged or simply superabundant, have been known to fly to simplicity and plain surfaces for repose. Owen Jones so sought refuge from a jaded appetite for colour and form. A fashion for plainness and simplicity in decoration is convenient in more ways than one. It is convenient to the new-made virtuoso, who likes it because it may imply that he could have done the contrary if he had chosen; convenient to those born without taste, for it saves them fiascos; convenient to the impecunious, for it saves them money; convenient to decorators who have crept into notice by good luck, not merit, like the clever doctor in Grimm's fairy tale, for it saves them trouble.

Hence the running popularity of the so-called 'Queen Anne' furniture and scheme of decoration, now provided by every upholsterer.

But alas! it is possible to be sated with simplicity, not to say discomfort. Already we are beginning to rebel against the plain square patch of wall painted grey, or drab, or some of those nameless earth-tints which the 'aesthetic' are vowed to. We know that the key-note of all these 'Queen Anne' rooms is quiet and mortally 'severe.' The chairs are few, hard, square and heavy, and covered with dingy velvets laboriously made to look poor and imperfect in web and recalling in colour mud - mildew - iron mould - nothing clean or healthy. We know that there is not to be a low or easy chair in any room. We know that the windows must be small, with poor little oblong panes, because windows bore a tax during the whole eighteenth century. We know we must expect only small bevelled mirrors in mean little frames - or convex ones which make our faces seem bloated with toothache or hollow with atrophy - our figures spent and wasted, as with a sore disease. All this we know - the papers on the walls, the colours in the carpet.

The 'inescapable' blue china, the one or two autotypes, photographs, or etchings alone permitted us; the bare, comfortless bed-room furniture; the austere dining-room furniture - the whole farouche protest against 'shaped ' and blazoned vulgarity ; we know it is aesthetic, and let us be aesthetic or we are nothing.

But is it pleasurable? is it beautiful? is it 'becom-ing'?