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preterpluperfect tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying
agonies. Touching pattern--a carpet should not be bedizzened out like
a Riccaree Indian--all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock's feathers. In
brief--distinct grounds, and vivid circular or cycloid figures, of
no meaning, are here Median laws. The abomination of flowers, or
representations of well-known objects of any kind, should not be
endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets,
or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this
nature should be rigidly Arabesque. As for those antique floor-cloth &
still occasionally seen in the dwellings of the rabble--cloths of huge,
sprawling, and radiating devises, stripe-interspersed, and glorious
with all hues, among which no ground is intelligible--these are but the
wicked invention of a race of time-servers and money-lovers--children
of Baal and worshippers of Mammon--Benthams, who, to spare thought
and economize fancy, first cruelly invented the Kaleidoscope, and then
established joint-stock companies to twirl it by steam.
Glare is a leading error in the philosophy of American household
decoration--an error easily recognised 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 offends. No one 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. We mean, of course,
the astral lamp proper--the lamp of Argand, with its original plain
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