As to the kinds of art which are right and proper, every age has its particular wants and its particular expression, but no age which truly loves beauty will confine its art to very narrow limits; the more it studies beauty the more elastic it finds it. And if we will give scope to the impulse and not bind it in with 'bits and bearing-reins,' it will take care of itself independently of 'a school' and all orthodox lines.

Therefore, people who formulate, and who follow, a fashion which is not the natural outcome of the time, are not to be relied on as teachers of what is absolutely good and bad in art. They are sure to be hoodwinked by their prejudices, and seeing but one small side of beauty themselves, they are apt to try and make everybody believe that no other side exists.

And everybody is apt to believe it, because, when we don't much care, it is convenient to have some one to think for us, and the sheepwalk is soon beaten out in a new direction with as little profit as ever to the sheep. When the mass agree in overshooting the mark, some sensible person points out that this is not all the world consists of - that a few other ideas remain to be worked up - and a reaction sets in with a violence proportioned to the previous excess.

Such is the history of every fashion, as I have elsewhere shown:1 the rise - usually from a basis of good sense - the apogee, and the decadence, in which the original motive is lost, as surely as the message in the old game of' 'scandal', then reform, and da capo.

This is what is happening now. We tore Louis Quinze (as the finale of Louis Quatorze) to pieces till he became abhorrent: then came the invariable recoil from ornate -to simple forms: but it is as easy to vulgarise poverty of thought as splendour, and when we see what British vulgarity made of a school based on the most gorgeous interpretations of classic types (found in luxurious Athens and Rome), we might predict what it would do for a school never very good from the first, being based on a servile copy of early Greek modes (temp. Napoleon I. - without of course any of the natural conditions which evolved the modes of early Greece).

These 'First Empire' copies are what we are copying now under the imaginary name of 'Queen Anne.' I shall presently compare them with the genuine fashions in the reign of that queen. And these copies of other copies are an affectation quite as artificial as the imitation 'Louis Quinze ' curves we have just done with. The fashion is not the natural growth of our age, for Britain is now in no ascetic or squeamish mood. Without the renewing of fresh vigour and new thoughts every fashion becomes vulgar and effete, as a body dies when the blood ceases to circulate in it. Hence the present ' aesthetic' craze, when it does not represent individual thought and effort, is as poor and parrot-like as any other craze that had led intelligent creatures astray.

1 This inevitable tendency has been spoken of in my books The Art of Beauty and The Art of Dress.

Beauty

An object is beautiful or the reverse according as it pleases the eye, and a combination of objects is beautiful or the reverse according to their harmony with each other. All this depends as much on graceful shadows as on lights.

In painting a picture, the artist has to consider, 1st, colour (which includes form); 2nd, keeping (which governs colour).

Technically speaking, by 'colour' is meant not so much any particular tint or tints, as the arrangement of all tints in an agreeable composition: by 'keeping' is meant an arrangement so skilful that the eye is not confused by the variety of incidents however many, but falls at once on the main point of interest to which everything works up, and at once receives a definite impression of the ensemble as 'cold' or 'hot,' tender or severe.

A room is like a picture; it must be composed with equal skill and forethought; but unlike a picture, the arrangement must revolve around to a point which is never stationary, always in motion; therefore the 'keeping' becomes a problem far harder than the colour.

The main point of interest to which the decorations should work up, is the inhabitants; but as they can never be reckoned upon, the picture must be composed as it were without the subject, like a poem without a point or a story without an end. This must be done by keeping the tone of colour down. That is to say, one part must not be so much more decorated than another as to put the rest out of tune; the general tone, or corresponding value of contrasting tints must be equalised, in subservience to the living beings that are yet to come in. Still, there should be 'keeping' - some minor point or nucleus where interest centres, and where the chief colours may be grouped, en attendant the main object.

It has always seemed to me that in this cold country the fireplace is the most natural nucleus; and it is probably because this has been unconsciously felt, that people range their best ornaments, the biggest mirror, the clock, the candlesticks, etc. upon the mantel-shelf.

In summer, some bay-window or shady niche might be the best nucleus, where the flowers in gayest pots, the curtains of softest folds, might be grouped: and in some such spot of main brilliancy the inhabitants, who would be sure to gravitate thither, would be the better thrown up and set off.

People always go to the prettiest and brightest part of the room, by instinct - at any rate young people will Bulwer observed that, in some note of his anent the sunny and shady sides of a street); and if the prettiest part of the room is also the most comfortable, they will stay there.

Group therefore the easiest and best-shapen seats where you wish people oftenest to sit: place there the ornaments of finest colour - an oriental jar of turquoise and orange, a brazen shield, a fine clock, flowers, or whatever makes the brightness of the room; then this shrine, so prepared for habitation, must have its main colouring carried out by other parts of the room, and this will be the less difficult where the ornaments are many and antique.