The wondrous ceilings of old Rome, mentioned by Seneca, made so as to revolve and show changing colours and decorations, as well as to admit acrobats and other dining-room diversions, are hardly likely to be revived in prosaic England, even in such mechanical days as ours. We do not propose to launch out into fanciful descriptions, or recommend their being again 'pegmata per se surgentia et tabulata tacite in sublime crescentia,' for people commonly have to be content with ceilings as they are, at least as to the fabric. Tenants seldom build their own houses, and are usually averse to spending too much money on a building they only possess on lease.

But we might make something better than we ever do of our ceilings. Paint is not too expensive to obtain, if it gives pleasure for five, ten, or twenty years to the owners; and as a well-painted ceiling lasts extremely well and gives a tone to the room which no other decoration does, I may offer a few hints on the subject.

Ceilings should always be coloured; for a darkish ceiling throws no cold reflections down, and materially heightens the room. The old Georgian ceilings of delicately moulded plaster used to be whitened: but this was part of the general fashion of bare material which came in with the Renascence, because the antique carving and stucco reliefs were often found bare; but the classics, and the mediaeval artists in their best time, not only knew but never disregarded the importance of colour. And such Georgian ceilings are better, even when tinted in a few faint colours, than left white, though outstanding ornament, happily, always itself forms variations in tints by natural shadows.

Those who have seen the magnificent ceilings in Venetian palaces must admit that although they would be too heavy and oppressive for a small drawing-room, it is more comfortable to see something pretty when we look up than a blank surface of whitey-grey paint. They are mostly formed on the simplest art-principles, cross beams which support the roof, and which naturally form panels that ask for decoration.

These panels once formed, any amount of ideas occur to us. The beams must be carved, then painted, then gilt in charming contrasts of colour; the intervening spaces may be treated in plain colour, or dotted with bosses more or less elegant, or filled with pictures of suitable subjects. This form of ceiling appears to me the most beautiful, and capable of the most delicious variations.

The fashion of treating the ceiling as an open roof, and painting it with clouds, inhabited by the heathen divinities either foreshortened in mid-air or treated in the flat, is one which I feel is false in taste; but we have all seen ceilings so splendidly painted that one forgets to criticise. Raphael, Michael Angelo, and their successors decorated ceilings of this kind still visible in Rome.

These are chiefly suited to banquet-halls and ballrooms; but a small portion of the ceiling painted like the sky with a few swallows is far from displeasing in a summer drawing-room. It ought, however, to be painted by Italians used to this kind of work, or under the supervision of an artist of calibre; otherwise the birds will have impossible wings, will stick to the 'ground' and not 'move' a hair's breadth.

People seldom notice ceilings now; they are so used to find nothing there to see; yet this expanse of surface should never be neglected by the decorator. The colour of walls demands carrying out above. In modern 'Empire-Anne' rooms the division of the ceiling into compartments by laths laid across has become common, and this is no doubt a step in progress, only the whiteness remains distressing, and the uniformity of the parallelograms, echoing the window-panes, creates no fresh interest. If the laths were left brown, and the spaces intervening bore a simple architectural 'rose' projecting, or simply painted in a few colours, the eye would be refreshed. Coats of arms at once occur as a suitable decoration either for the ceiling-panels or for the point where the laths cross; they can be brilliantly coloured without being obtrusive, because all colours are darkened by shadow at that elevation.

The ancient decorations of the ceiling of St. Albans Cathedral are painted very roughly on laths in colours, brown predominating. Such decorations might easily be done by idle sons and daughters, or would make a capital subject for a 'Bee.' A ceiling-bee would be more to the purpose than a spelling-bee, as the aim would be the accomplishment of a common object, instead of a few outwitting and bewildering the rest.

The Italians have a knack of so colouring flat ceilings as to look like domes: a very ingenious effect requiring the nicest calculation of distances; there is one in the museum at Milan which is painted in browns and greys which, whatever our opinion of the taste, must be confessed successful.

In Belgium I saw a ceiling closely covered with small oriental blue saucers, which formed a quaint raised pattern pleasing in itself; but as soon as we realised that they were saucers we could never be persuaded of their safety, and a vague anxiety pervaded our movements beneath that ceiling ever after. Anxiety of the kind is incompatible with good taste.

The French palaces which contain fine ceilings are numerous. Artists of the first rank have always designed or actually painted such ceilings, which offer good opportunities for studies in folds and foreshortening. But a ceiling must be adapted to the room it crowns, and to the height at which it stands. A very obtrusive ceiling in a low-pitched room would seem to be coming down on our heads, you cannot forget it; in a very lofty room the ceiling cannot be too obtrusive, and in some modern rooms, quite like wells in their exaggerated height, we long for some ceiling that will assert its existence.

A plain ultramarine ceiling dotted with gold stars is sometimes very agreeable; but the stars must be very small; and smaller towards the centre than towards the sides. Of course they must be scattered at irregular intervals. A blue ceiling painted with a conventional cloud-border in a much paler blue is pretty also; and when blue is not liked in other parts of the room, the mass above carries out the right proportions in the least obtrusive manner. For instance, given a room furnished with various reds, a considerable share of amber and yellow, softened together with spaces of Spanish leather, which, though including many colours, tells brown: - it would be difficult here to check 'five red and three yellow,' with 'eight blue,' ordained of the orthodox colour mauve, unless the blue were on the ceiling; but in this elevated place the colour is sufficiently visible to satisfy the eye, without breaking up the scheme of colour below which might be a little 'hot' were blue wholly excluded.

The frieze should always connect the walls and ceiling by rounding off the angle, and should contain the main colours of both either pure or in combination; e.g., a Venetian-red wall and an olive-green ceiling may have a frieze of orange containing these reds and greens, the green nearest the red, the red nearest the green; or, the frieze should partake noticeably of the tertiary citrine which is formed by the admixture of orange and green (see Diagram, page 12). Those who do not know what olive-green is may look at an olive.

A plain red ceiling sometimes has the happiest effect. It requires carrying out by red in the furniture. A gold ceiling contrasts beautifully with almost any coloured wall, and does not bring the roof down. Paper is less expensive than gold-leaf, and lasts better than one would expect. I have tried it with a purple wall, bringing the gold a foot down, like a frieze. Mr. Alma Tadema has tried it with the upper half of the wall gold also, and the effect is admirable. Some of Cottier's ceilings are very fine.

As hardly anything lasts worse than a white or cream ceiling, the additional expense of the first outlay is not lost in making the ceiling a work of art; and if gas be not used, such a ceiling will last a very long time, all the colours toning down equally and unnoticeably. The improvement to a room will never be disregarded by those who have once tried the experiment.