May I remind readers that a candlestick, lamp, or any other support, ought to be a pretty and consistent object? That Cleopatra's Needle alight at one end, and streaked with pink and blue, is scarcely a work of art? That pheasants and monkeys adhering to portions of the rooms, and upholding lamps, are by many degrees removed from a correct feeling for either art or nature; and that even such miserable shreds of humanity as babes without bones, and Don Quixotes with nothing else, are equally tasteless supports for moderators. If the representation of humanity is desired for this purpose, it ought to be in a strong material and in an attitude suggesting physical force.

Large negro-lads with glass eyes and arsenic-green draperies starred with gold, are not as suitable, even in a great hall, as a bronze Hercules or a really well-modelled elephant. I have seen copies in marble and terra-cotta, of classic statues adapted to gas-jets and lamps which they support in their hands, and the effect is sometimes neither unnatural nor ugly, for a human being can hold a lamp. Terra-cotta is a material so facile and inexpensive that it might be oftener used to reproduce really fine designs of artists of calibre, where the sound knowledge of the frame, and the firm nervous handling leave nothing to be desired. But anything suggesting animal forms which is short of first-rate will be avoided by people who either have taste or who wish to seem to have it. And as almost all modern designs in plate, biscuit, plaster gilt, bronze, etc. sold in big shops are modelled by so-called 'artists' with the best intentions and soaring fancy, but no adequate knowledge of anatomy, I think those who cannot employ a Royal Academician for such ornaments had better either adhere to standard reproductions of antiques, or - avoid animal forms altogether.