Besides being works of art, pictures have an important office to fulfil in the home as decoration for the walls. A room may be perfectly equipped with all the required furniture, its floors covered with carpets or rugs, the window light screened or tempered with hangings and the walls papered in artistic colours and good designs, and yet the result be not quite satisfying. The reason is apparent by a glance at the pictureless walls.

The standard of selection in this department cannot be fixed too high. In the case of wedding, birthday and anniversary presents that fail to reach any art excellence one is helpless, but where a choice is possible it should be made seriously, and not the object alone but the position it is to occupy considered.

Masterpieces of art are naturally out of reach of the majority of our homes, but there may be found at this time a larger variety of good pictures at moderate prices than ever before.

The selection of pictures must be a matter of individual taste and preference. A picture should never be bought because it is cheap, nor because the frame is desirable; nor should the choice fall to pictures that look well in some other house, as environment has as peculiar an effect upon some pictures as on some persons. Restraint should be exercised in picture buying, on whatever scale it is attempted. Perhaps the most critical test for the amateur purchaser is that of interesting composition or motive.

A lover of old-world art may find in copies of his favourite pictures a great deal of enjoyment, and the half-tone engravings from works of the modern painters, Bonheur, Burne-Jones, Landseer, Millet and Rossetti may be turned to with pleasure. Carbon prints in brown or in blue, platinotypes without surface gloss, etchings, reproductions of portraits from Reynolds, Van Dyck, Holbein, Rembrandt, photogravures in dull-grey finish of literary scenes - these are a small number of the sources to be drawn upon for the artistic furnishing of the wall.

Expense is not always involved, either, if one knows where to turn to in the high-class magazines for coloured prints. The work of one illustrator may, for instance, be grouped under one mat, or several pictures that have a correlated interest may be framed alike and hung near together.

The unique character of the coloured prints of Indian heads suggests a key-note for following up other decorations in the room on the same theme, after the pictures themselves have been placed, with Navajo rug, Moki baskets and Pueblo pottery. In the same way the Japanese prints offer opportunities for decorations in sympathy with their quaint colourings.

The subject of framing may be entered upon from two points of view: first, the relation of the frame to the picture; second, the relation of the framed picture to the room. It must always be remembered that a frame should never be so emphatic as to draw attention away from the picture. It is simply and only a frame or setting.

Mats are a part of the frame and therefore an essential element in presenting the picture to the best advantage. A few years ago it was the custom to mount photographs on white cards, but the grey, green or brown mats are now given the preference, the colour being decided by the general tone of the print. Special cards are made that require no mounting of the photograph, the bevelled opening being left for inserting the picture. This does away with one of the chief difficulties in amateur framing - the mounting of the print.

A passe-partout is an inexpensive expedient for a regular frame and requires only a glass and binding paper; the latter may be bought in black, green, white, red and gray - a good variety to select from. It is better to fasten the strip of binding paper all around the glass first, and then lay the glass over the print and its cardboard back. Then fasten the strips of binding paper at the back. If the picture is to be hung on the wall it wall be necessary to insert brass rings at the back. Rings for this purpose arc sold with a gummed cloth which is quickly attached to the back of the picture.

A group of pictures may be put under one mat or framed in a more durable way with glass and wooden frame. The record of a visit to the famous musical city of Baireuth was made in a series of photographic views framed together, the first picture showing the entrance to the town, and the other pictures continuing a pictorial story of adventures enjoyed during the stay.

The hanging of a picture makes or mars its success as a decoration for the room. If the colours arc painted or printed in bright tones, the degree of light needed is not so great in the daytime, or in the evening, as with colours of less intense character. Dark corners of a room may be perceptibly brightened by the introduction of pictures high in key - pinks, reds and yellows.

Large pictures exact distance to appear to their best advantage. This rule applies also to compositions of curving brooks and winding roads that seem to disappear beyond the horizon.

Family portraits bear so intimate a relation to the life of the household that they belong in the living rooms, except when for some reason they suit the scheme of decorations for the formal hall or drawing room.

Portraits of celebrated authors acquire increased interest when placed near their works, and pictures of composers are more attentively studied when hung near musical instruments. In one library a little gallery of writers' faces was made by rilling the entire wall above the bookshelves with prints framed uniformly. The same idea might be taken up in a music room with the same success, using good photographs or engravings of persons eminent in the musical field.

Small pictures that are distributed at intervals around a wall lack the style that they will present when grouped more closely to-gether. The same principle applies to the small plaster medallions that are usually disposed, each by itself, around the room.