Of course you cannot yourselves paint your Walls or paper them; I hope you have something better to do! A really thoughtful decorator who can mix paints and respect your likings is invaluable. He will come if you call for him - call loudly enough.

If you want an industrious slave to furnish your room after a given period because you have not patience to collect the elements, that is one thing; he lives round the corner, and makes it his business to 'pick up,' or rather fabricate, pieces of furniture which he thinks suitable. But if you want an adviser who, naturally gifted with art feeling, has turned his powers in the direction of house-decoration, and who decorates by harmonising the laws of art with the tastes, habits, and needs of the inmates - if you want such a man, you must wait for him, he does not live round the corner; he is not ubiquitous.

Many houses decorated by Mr. William Wallace, which are well relieved by individuality of the highest class, deserve mention. Mr. John Stevenson's house, built and decorated by himself, and several houses decorated by Owen Jones, and especially by Cottier, are valuable contributions to domestic art. The names of bad decorators, large and dismal as my experience is both of their powers and their prices, I forbear to give.

There are people who love light - large windows which open easily, small carpets which are easily shaken, gay colours. Let them have them. There are others who like darkness, and prefer the smallest panes and most difficult bolts and hinges: give them their way, in no other wise can we get the individual element, originality, in a room. There are shortsighted persons who dread polished boards (which are no doubt a hateful institution and destructive of all grace of gait) and the up-turned corners of rugs: give them a secure large single carpet. Some like short dumpy curtains that just touch the floor; others like the majestic lines of sweeping folds. Both are to be respected.

It is not quiet tones, nor vivid tones, which make or mar a beautiful room; and there is no downright law as to whether velvet is better than rep, or cotton than silk; why one should be sacred to this piece of furniture, or that to another. It is the thought and the skill which can use all things fitly and well, and make them subserve an intelligible purpose. It is the delicate, practised perception which places such a colour here, such another there - which feels how to craftily mingle richness with paucity of colour, so as not to tire the senses by either - how to avoid both pomposity and barrenness. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. This discrimination divides the born decorator from the mere purveyor of reigning fashions, the artist from the upholsterer.

I know a few persons in almost every rank of life who possess real native good taste: their rooms invariably have the cachet of individuality - a bowl of red berries, a little pot with some weed in it which for the moment has its own pretty lesson to teach - some novel use of the fender, with quaint trivets and gay dishes; some white tulip in a dark corner; some bright apple laid on a shelf that needs its shining rind - the original touch comes unexpectedly, now this, now that: here, like a sparkling dew-drop, gone, like a bird's wing.

There are moods of heart when the fairest hues cut like a shrewd pain, when the softest curves feel harsh; when grave tones and severe lines lend a mute relief because the eyes are holden by an inward enemy. Such possibilities must be borne in mind in decorating a room whose colours cannot be put off like a gown, and therefore a room does not admit of such violent contrasts and surprises as dress which is soon changed. Still it is not for such sad souls - at least in their sadness - that beauty ripens her free, sweet gifts; and as the lesson of life is to bear and to recover, it is a kindlier task to cheer than to depress, though it should be done with tact and tenderness.

Let, then, our homes reflect our warmest and most sympathising moods so far as art has the making of them, and let the art be the very best of its kind, however little. Let them fit our daily wants as the shell its fish and the plume its bird.

Helpers Who Hinder

I have said much about loving and studying art, and much about the importance of thinking out one's own conclusions; but for the sake of the many who need a helping hand at first, who must have aid to bring forth the budding ideas without overmuch labour and sorrow, I must add a word or two about our helpers.