principle of taste in dress is. that the pattern
of a dress should harmonize with the form
and motions of the body upon which it is
worn. Stripe your trousers vertically if
they must be striped, so that the lines may
harmonize in direction with the movements
of your figure. The bars across your legs
and body suggest obstacle and opposition.
They are ungraceful also in being large and
violently visible. Against a small check in
which there is no strong contrast of colours,
and which has no strongly pronounced lines
running in any direction, the authority on
which I stand wages no war. There are four
trouser patterns hung up in the Chamber of
Horrors at Marlborough House, not one of
which is so detestable as that which you are
wearing.

"In the next place, sir, I must be allowed
to point out that those ballet dancers that are
stamped in dabs, as with a butter print, about
your shirt, are the direct reverse of ornamental.
I saw four pieces of calico for shirts
hung up among the horrors. One piece was
covered with perspective representations of
a summer-house and trees in stripes; the
others were censured for presenting direct
imitations of figures and animals, ballet
girls, polka dancers, and race-horses in various
attitudes. I will tell you, sir, part of the
reason why these things are ugly. The ornament
of fabrics, whether for clothing or for
furniture; whether in wool, silk, wood, metal,
glass, or what you please, should in the first
place be closely fitted to the uses of the thing.
It must convey a sense of fitness to the mind,
and vex the eye with nothing that suggests a
consciousness of incongruity or contradiction.
Now, there is no fitness in stamping racehorses
over a shirt, and tucking them away
under your outer garments."

"I don't know that, Crumpet," said my
friend. "It is a moral hint to fast young
men who affect race-horses and betting clubs,
that they run a risk of being left with that
one garment to call their own."

"Mr. Frippy, sir," I replied, "I discuss
principles of ornamental art; you speak of
principles that relate to the great betting
houses question. Ornament, sir, is in its
essence geometrical. Direct imitations of
nature may be here and there appropriate,
but as a rule they are in opposition to correct
taste. Ornament, sir, requires symmetry, a
careful correspondence of parts, and a nice
balance of colour. Each object of nature,
Mr. Frippy, is an ornament. Take a pheasant,
for example; it is clothed in colours
mingled according to a harmonious design,
but not with direct copies of other objects—
when did you see a pheasant stamped over
with race-horses or ballet dancers? Allow
me on this head to quote to you a few sentences
that I have taken the trouble to learn by heart
out of the catalogue. They are the words, sir, of
Mr. Dyce.  'The art of ornamenting consists in
the application of natural modes of decoration,
not in applying pictures, or sculptures of
natural objects to our fabrics. If you ask me
why Oriental ornamentation is so agreeable
and natural, though it consists of little that
resembles natural objects, I reply at once, it
is because Oriental fabrics are ornamented in
the same way as natural objects are. The
forms employed are natural and beautiful
forms; the colours are arranged, and contrasted,
and modified as we find them in
nature. The lines are such as we find in
almost every other flower or object that meet
us, and therefore always pleasing. The
object of the ornamentist is not to make mere
copies of natural objects, and to paint pictures,
or carve images of them on the furniture and
appliances of life. His purpose is to adorn
the contrivances of mechanical and architectural
skill, by the application of those
principles of decoration, and of those forms
and modes of beauty, which Nature herself
has employed in adorning the structure of
the world.'"

"I see sense there, Crumpet,"-said my
friend.

"Of course you do," I answered. " Why
does a lady look so well under an Indian
shawl? Because the worker of the Indian
pattern, however badly he may have drawn
his design, has harmonised its parts, chosen
his tints well, and selected the right quantity
of each; his design has been to produce such
a harmony of colour as his pure instinct has
felt to exist in the bird's feather or the flower
cup. Such a shawl is only seen to fresh
advantage when it hangs in drapery, and
gains new grace by following the movements
of the body. But just look at the shawl upon
that lady's back as she walks now before us.
What a vile discord of colours, and observe
how the pattern is broken up into a jumble
by the folds that interrupt it. If we are to
see the pattern of that shawl, she should
carry it on her back spread out quite flat and
nailed on a square board, making a sort of
tortoise of herself; but indeed I am sure the
pattern is not worth displaying.

"Consider me a lecturer, Mr. Frippy, if
you please," I said; " stand here for a minute,
and let us have an object lesson on the people
in the road. Now there's an object for you, a
lady in a silk dress covered with vases—how
often you see vases, by the bye, on muslin
window-curtains!—what fitness is there in
that? How can a vase be folded, and what
business have vases on that lady's person?
Look at that little boy who wipes his chilly
nose upon the Sydenham new palace, which
he has just pulled out of his jacket pocket!
Here comes a gentleman, well dressed as he
fancies; look at the pattern of his waistcoat,
a direct imitation of marble. If men have
sometimes flinty hearts, is that a reason why
they should wear marble waistcoats? Look
at the colours in the clean print dress of that
servant girl who has just opened the door
over the way; observe the total want of