After all- when we shake off the fetters of association--what a ridiculous object is a 'picture,' hanging on a wall by a string! What connection has it with the wall-colour, which it hides; or with the lines of the panels, which it commonly contradicts! Unless built and fitted into its place, really or ostensibly, a 'picture' is surely an object contrary to good taste - especially when a number are crowded together; and the frame is often a shining eyesore. However beautiful the work, is it not unmeaning where it hangs? A picture is really meant to deceive the eye; to create a false vista, through a supposed opening in the wall. That is what pictures on walls were originally painted for, to extend the apparent area, much as a mirror does - pleasant where a fine real outlook was unattainable To this end subjects were painted on classic walls, as we find in the Roman House of Germanicns, and in Pompeiian frescoes, and .their frames were the architectural structure of the wall. To this end tapestries were woven in Gothic times, and pictures painted with architectural borders like alcoves, meant to be as deceptive as possible.

How entirely, then, we mistake the function of a picture when we hang, for instance, a portrait, where by no manner of means that person could be! - when we place a peaceful landscape close adjoining a battle-scene or sea-scape - or set a subject with small figures nigh one with big figures which belong to another focus of sight altogether! To the thoughtful spectator our picture-hanging is chaos, and the classics would hoot us Annamaniacs and all.

Is not a picture, rightly understood, a portable wall or panel, and not to be hung up, like a hat or coat, on a peg? Ought not the panel-edge, now gilt, because gold sets off pictures well, to be echoed in other panels or openings, windows, doors, etc, in similar pattern and similar gold? We may excuse ourselves by the exigencies of poverty, or modern conditions - but the exigencies should be removed, the fact remains.

Paint was intended to be applied in domestic art, as Mr. William Burges applied it, as an outer finish to permanent constructions of every kind; if on a wall it should form a panel, and may be treated in the round as a supposed outlook: if on furniture, it should interpret and adorn it, and should be treated in the flat; and this is a rational view. But the question whether wall pictures ought ever to represent natural scenes, or whether all mural decoration must be flat and conventionally treated, as some decorators, like Owen Jones, aver, we must leave the reformed artists of the future to fight out between them.