IT will be apparent from the preceding chapters that the study of period decoration does not lie within the scope of this essay, which is concerned neither with individual nor epochal expression in interior decoration, but rather with the basic principles that underlie and condition all expression in that art.

Period decoration is in theory and in practice an attempt to employ in the decoration of present-day homes the ideals, forms and materials of an earlier day. We have, however, seen that interior decoration is properly an art having the distinctly practical aim of making homes beautiful and comfortable to live in; that to be beautiful a given house must conform to esthetic laws derived from the constitution of the mind itself, and therefore lying far below all that is changing and ephemeral; while to be comfortable it must satisfy a complex of special needs, tastes and circumstances which of necessity varies with each household, and is in fact as unique as the complex of lines in a finger-print. Since one of the factors in every decorative problem is in the nature of things unique, it follows that every satisfactory solution of such a problem must also be unique, and that accordingly a man cannot live in his neighbor's house, or his father's or his grandfather's house, and find it in any accurate sense both beautiful and comfortable. How, therefore, can he expect to live in the homes of one or two or three hundred years ago?

Of course, no one really does. The most enthusiastic exponent of period decoration professes merely to adapt the historic styles to present-day needs, though it is to be noted that in practice he seeks to re-create the ideals of the past, and to reproduce its rooms with meticulous fidelity to detail. The ideal of a return to the past is however foolish and quite unrealizable. We cannot return to the past, either in art or in life, precisely because it is the past. The hour or the age that has been borne backward by the stream of time is gone, with its own ideals and aspirations, its proper modes of thought and action. It can never be called back or re-created or re-lived. Hence period decoration, in the degree that it is fully and accurately realized, is mere pose, theatrical and unreal. It is in fact only in the degree that an historic style can be so modified in practice as to adapt it to the requirements of comfortable modern life that it is properly of interest to the decorator of to-day. In the degree that it is too archaic, too ponderous, too sumptuous or too exotic for present-day homes it is properly of academic interest only, and the attempt to use it in practice in spite of its manifest unfitness can result only in actual ugliness and discomfort, however great may be the effect of magnificence or the merely pictorial value of the rooms.

Much of undoubted value can be learned through the systematic study of period decoration that can be learned in no other way, but the time required for such a study is prohibitive for most laymen, while the mass of descriptive and illustrative material essential to it has never been - and cannot be - condensed into a single volume. The student who has the time and energy to go ahead with the serious study of the subject will find an admirable literature in English and French, while several manuals are available which treat different phases of it superficially but helpfully for the general reader.

In all ages man has tried as best he could to make his home satisfy his needs and aspirations. If we take a quick glance backward over such of his attempts as have been made in historical times we will see that from time to time, at a given period and among a given people, architects, builders, designers and craftsmen of all sorts get into the habit of doing things in a certain way - of emphasizing certain types of line, form, proportions, ornamental motives and colorings. These ways will always be seen to have grown more or less spontaneously out of the ideals and customs of the past, and to be adjusted more or less perfectly to the ideals and customs of the particular period. And because these ways of doing things conform to the prevailing social, economic and political conditions, and express the prevailing social and ethical ideals, they become general, then dominant, and thus crystallize into what we call a style. Among other peoples with different ideals and needs other styles become dominant. Everywhere styles wax and wane and are succeeded by new styles which more adequately express new ideals or meet changed conditions. Infrequently what we call the period styles have expressed the needs and tastes of a whole people: usually those of the court and the aristocracy only. Always they are in a state of flux, because they are merely the reflection in one medium - as literature is in another medium, and historic costume in a third - of life, which is itself always in a state of flux. Thus each style emerges slowly from an earlier one, climbs to the meridian of its purest expression, declines, degenerates and decays, following the universal law of life.

The civilizations of the ancient world made no important contributions toward the development of the modern house. Neither did the civilization of medieval Europe, with its feudal organization of society and its vast and gloomy castles. It was not until the Renaissance that the modern house and modern methods of furnishing it began to emerge. From the middle of the fifteenth century until the end of the eighteenth - that is, from the Renaissance to the French revolution, when the old regime passed, and aristocracy began to yield place to modern industrial democracy - the tides of life flowed swiftly in Europe, and, as we would expect, frequent and relatively rapid changes took place in the manner of building and furnishing houses.

While the Renaissance began in Italy, it quickly spread to the north and west. In architecture and decoration the Italian ideas, forms and practice soon reached France, and, half a century later, we find them in England, where they displaced or fused with the Gothic ideals and practice. They became dominant in France with the accession of Francois I in 1515, and in England with the accession of Elizabeth in 1558.