The French styles developed smoothly and logically, that of Francois I being followed by those of Henri II, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI. After the revolution the Directoire and the Empire styles were created, from foreign elements chiefly classical, by the fiat of Napoleon. In England, owing to frequent changes of dynasty, and to the constant interfusion of foreign ideas through political and commercial causes, the styles changed rapidly, beginning with the Elizabethan, followed by the Jacobean, the styles of Charles the First, the Commonwealth, Charles the Second, William and Mary, Queen Anne, and the Early Georgian, and by the late eighteenth century Adam style and the individual furniture styles of Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Sheraton, and finally terminating in the nineteenth century in the so-called Victorian style.

During the nineteenth century decoration, like architecture, fell into a period of decline. Taste became debased, craftsmanship inferior, and in America, as in Europe, builders, manufacturers and housefurnish-ers alike gave over all attempt at serious original work, and contented themselves with poor reproductions and poorer adaptations of the work of the past.

Some forty years ago our wealthier people began to want more fitting and beautiful homes. These people had traveled in France, and they turned naturally to France for models, so that there was a period of almost two decades in which French ideas and practice were dominant in the furnishings of important American houses. Later the English styles began to be copied, and presently, almost over night, we had among us the phenomenon of period decoration. The thing went farther than mere copying. Whole rooms - woodwork, ceiling, fireplace, furniture; everything except the pregnant associations and the spiritual quality that made them significant and beautiful - were torn out of old English houses and French chateaux and set up, as in the bed of Procrustes, at whatever cost of amputation or stretching, in the great American houses.

Decoration is an art that always works downward - from the king, through the aristocracy, to the bourgeoisie; from the rich, through the well-to-do, to the poor. Period decoration in America took the usual course. Those who could afford to buy and transport European interiors did so. Those who could not afford it bought European rugs, furniture and fabrics. Those who couldn't afford these things contented themselves with cheaper reproductions of European originals. Those who couldn't afford reproductions bought cheaper adaptations of reproductions. Once period decoration became vogue, everybody went in for it. From that time on our progress in the reproduction of historic furnishings has been astonishing. To-day reproductions of the furniture, fabrics and decorative accessories of every historic style at all adapted to the conditions of modern life are offered in a variety nothing less than bewildering. In the fever of production no source has been left unexplored by the manufacturer or the importer. The decorator finds himself the heir of all the ages. People with money to spend can buy and place in their homes reproductions or adaptations of every decorative object or material that ever was on land or sea. In fact, many of them do. One has only to sit down with a good manual of period decoration, a history of architecture, a history of costume and a history of society, and to compare the furniture and decorative art of a given period with its houses, its clothes, its literature, its social organization and its political, artistic and ethical ideals in order to realize that decoration, historically, has always had a purposive aim. All that was vital in the housefur-nishing art of any given period was fitting; and all that is vital in it to-day is fitting. The rest is dross - interesting to the student, to be sure, like alchemy or the paintings of the cave-man - but without practical importance. It is clear that we must use historic furniture until our own designers can give us something better; if, indeed, the thing be ever possible. But it is no less clear that anything used in our homes should fit our needs, and that to copy slavishly the decorative practice of any historic period is quite as absurd as to copy its clothes, its schools or its methods of transportation.

Plate XVI. - The fire-screen, which is a very useful piece of furniture, can be so designed as to reveal any desired combination of outline, texture, hue, tone and texture, and is therefore valuable in creating effects of parallelism in the composition of the fire-place group.

Courtesy of Gill & Reigate Ltd., London.

It must be admitted, however, that it is one thing to recognize the absurdity of an action, and another thing to refrain from the action, provided we think it to be the correct or the smart thing to do. Just at present no one thinks it the smart thing to have the floors of his rooms strewn with rushes, though this was the usual method of treating the floors of the great houses of Tudor England, even in the time of Elizabeth. On the other hand, it is now considered by many decorators, both professional and laymen, to be the smart thing to furnish a dining room with a refectory table and benches. Thus we find otherwise sensible people sitting on long, narrow and uncomfortable benches, and crowded at either side of a very narrow table which, as used historically, had diners on one side only - the side very near a wall, which offered protection against a surprise attack or a sudden knife-thrust from behind - while the other side was kept free for the movements of the servitors.

There is one safe way, and one only, to use in the homes of to-day the rich inheritance of the past. That way is to break things down into their essentials; to look to the meanings of things, and not to the time and place of their origin. What is a Louis XV chair? Essentially, a composition of curved lines of a peculiar type. Will it look well in a given drawing room? Assuredly, if the room contains in its architectural treatment and its other furniture and ornament enough lines of the same characteristic type to ensure an easily perceptible degree of likeness, and if the proportions of the chair accord with those of the room; but not otherwise. What is a cinquecento damask Essentially a composition of outline, color and texture, and as such it is well or ill adapted to our use in the degree that it accords with the other outlines, colors and textures dominant in the room to be decorated. The esthetic significance of a chair, a table or a cabinet depends in part upon its ornament, but chiefly upon its proportions and dominant lines; and whenever the proportions and dominant lines of chairs or tables or cabinets belonging to different historic styles are markedly similar, and their ornamental detail not so dissimilar as to destroy the necessary unity of the treatment, such pieces can be used together in a modern room quite as effectively as if they were the products of the same style.