If you adopt other people's ideas, you ought to have some better reason than because someone else does it. "Tis poor feeding where the flavour of the meat depends on the cruets,' said Mrs. Poyser, and it is a poor fashion which has not its own apology in grace and good sense.

It is marvellous what mistakes we may fall into unless we observe whether or no Precedent defies Propriety. No thoroughly bad fashion would ever take a firm hold on society were it not for the indolence of those who can, but will not, think for themselves, and the timidity of those who dread what is new. For instance, one hears ladies laying down the law in this style: 'You must have old point on your mantel-shelf; it is indispensable. Everyone has it!' Yet good sense tells us that a delicate fabric designed to adorn a lady's dress is as unsuited to the rough and dusty service of furniture close to the fire as a pearl necklace or ostrich plumes. Why, therefore, ' must' we adopt a freak of luxury, founded on neither good sense nor good taste? Again, we hear, ' Fire ornaments are quite gone out; you must stick a Japanese parasol in the stove, or fill it with tinsel and waterlilies.' It matters not how outrageous the notion - primroses planted in the fender, a rockery of ferns, a scent fountain playing up the chimney, or a white satin bow from the register - the argument is always the same: 'I am telling everybody of it, and they are all doing it!'

This is the way in which foolish fashions speedily infect a whole community, because each person is afraid to be independent, or likes to have somebody to think for her. I quote the stove, because no other part of the house has been so tortured into a false position or an unnatural aspect; yet why, in this uncertain clime, a fire-place is never to confess its name when not in use, any more than a chair or a piano, I do not know.

It seems to me better that a thing should be candidly acknowledged in disuse than made ridiculous by misuse, and it is better to risk being called eccentric than to follow a bad example; yet, given that a fire-place ought reasonably to serve as a flower-pot or a fish pond in summer, and that a mantel-shelf ought to be dressed like a lady, if a fine were imposed on everybody who copied her neighbour's work the result would be interesting as the products of original minds, for the various methods, if not all good, would be certainly all new.

Good sense is the basis of all that is beautiful, and details of ornament as well as the ensemble ought to be the natural result of our habits and tastes. 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 which has led intelligent creatures astray.

People require teaching, helping, forcing to develop their own resources and to evolve their own tastes. The schoolboy is punished for using a 'crib,' not because it is wrong, but because it is his duty to exercise his brains. And, although a foolish opposition to all reigning habits may become equally weak, for people should have the courage of their opinions - courage even to echo if need be, without limiting their speech to a continual echo - yet those would-be leaders are stumbling-blocks to progress who say, 'This is done, therefore do it.' , Nay, do not go on nibbling at the half-eaten grass - move onward to pastures new, little lambs.