geometrical distribution in the pattern, which
is, moreover, too large for the fabric, and how
violently all the colours are contrasted! The
colouring, also, is by far too full. The dry
surface of cotton, Mr. Frippy, will not bear
so much fulness of colour, as silks and
delaines. I would remark also, on the
authority of Mr. Redgrave, which is quoted
in the catalogue of the Museum of Ornamental
Art, that woven patterns in silk, formed by
tabby and satin, or a self colour, will bear
much larger figures than are applicable to
either woven patterns in varied colours, or
the same printed on cottons or silk. Every
design must be adapted to the fabric for
which it is intended, and a design suited to a
texture of one description will not answer for
another differing in lustre and other important
respects."

By this time I had eased my mind a good
deal, and might have continued farther to
explain to my friend who was so fiendishly
attired, some of the correct principles of dress,
when we reached the door of Chimborazo
Villa, and he laid his hand upon the knocker.
Having said so much, I abstained from asking
why a Sphinx in brass, with a large wart
upon her neck, had been selected as the
knocker to a door stained in imitation of rosewood,
and why the door stood between two
wooden Ionic columns, painted to resemble
porphyry. Young Mrs. Frippy, with hospitable
smiles, was peeping over the parlour
blind, and the most correct taste can feel only
gratification in the vicinity of Mrs. Frippy.
I pulled out my shirt frill, laboured to
forget the horrors that surrounded me, and
talked thenceforth of ordinary matters of a
cheerful gossippy character,—the great funeral,
the recent earthquake, the late floods, and the
other floating topics of the day. The time, I
said to myself, is now come, when—as I heard
it said at Sadler's Wells, and I believe, therefore,
the chaste thought is Shakspeare's—
when hollow heart must wear a mask. You
must not find fault with a man's domestic
arrangements when you are about to eat his
dinner. The crumpet that is going to be
buttered ought not to look black.

At the same time I must remark that,
although I said nothing, after hanging my
hat up in the hall, I had great trouble in
straightening my hair as I went in to the
ladies, it would stand upright at the horror
of my friend's hall-paper. I had seen it in
the Chamber of Horrors—perspective
representations of a railway station frequently
repeated. Why is it that people do not
understand what I have understood quite
well for the last five weeks; that pictures of
any kind, and above all, perspectives, are
unusually out of place repeated round a wall.
One picture can be seen correctly only from
one point of view; and when it is repeated
up and down, and round about a place, the
result is a nightmare.

When I really entered my friend's social
parlour my hair would have gone quite up,
like the hair of the small head on an electrical
machine, if Mrs. Frippy with her bright
smile and joyous greeting had not antagonised
her furniture. My wife and daughter also
mended the room with their faces; though,
as my wife wore her best gown, and my
daughter, in that tawny stripe of hers, looked
like an atrocious zebra, they threw something
also into the bad side of the balance. It was
past four o'clock, and as we had begun a little
general conversation, Frippy rallying my
daughter on the subject of young Lunn; she
saying scornfully, that he lived upon pale ale
and oysters; I saying gravely that Sally
Lunn his mother was a sister of mine, and I
didn't approve of cousins marrying; things
going on in this way for a few minutes very
pleasant, I was in hope that I should not be
asked for further criticism, or taken round to
see the fittings. Suddenly, however, Frippy
said something about the snugness of the
room.

"You've made the place quite lovely, Mr.
Frippy," said my daughter. "What pains
you must have taken, and what taste you
must have! You can't conceive how I
admire the harmony between the carpet and
the paper!"

"What I covet," my wife said, "is the rug;
did you work it yourself.

"And what do you say, Crumpet? " asked
my friend. " Would it pass muster at Marlborough
House?'"

"O that horrid Marlborough House, that
department of Practical Art and Ornamental
Museum! Has papa been teazing you very
much, you poor dear Mr. Frippy? " that was
what Miss Maria said, the minx! " Papa
don't speak, you see; he thinks everything
hideous; but as you've paid for it, he is
unwilling to disturb your peace. Is it not so,
papa? O yes, I know. My papa, Mr. Frippy,
is in the position of the person mentioned
in Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies, who possibly
was troubled with what papa calls,
' Correct Principles of Taste in Decoration.'
He said, you know,

"' There rose no day, there roll'd no hour
Of pleasure unembitter'd;
And not a trapping deck'd my power,
That gall'd not while it glitter'd.'"

It being generally wished that I should
speak my mind, I said that I would merely
allude to what my daughter had said about
the paper-hanging and the carpet. "We
who are sitting in a room," I said, " grouped
in our own natural way, together with the
furniture and ornaments about us, are the
subjects of a picture which each room presents,
and to which the decoration on the wall
serves as a background. In the first place,
the background should be calculated in such
a way as to heighten the effect that is to be
produced by the arrangements made before
it. 'It may enrich the general effect,' we