OUR FURNITURE.

IN the great majority of cases, the manner in which a household is furnished may be considered as a fair index of the habits and taste of the inmates. Those people who think about the matter may be said to exude the little elegances and appliances of their domestic adornments as naturally as the fish exudes the mother-of-pearl shell. The character of their minds is plainly written upon their chairs and tables, their pictures, and their statuary; and a person of discernment can instantly make a very shrewd guess at the tone of the person's mind in whose house he may happen to be. A lady glances at the pretty trifles on her friend's mantelpiece, skims over the cardbasket by way of indorsing her opinion respecting the position of the inmates, and sums up the total at once, as ladies are apt to do. The man generalises as to the fitness of things around him, their keeping, &c., and at once goes to the pictures. Therein he sees, as clearly as in a glass, the artistic as well as the moral tendencies of the host's mind, and a very slight glance at the book-range enables him to make a close estimate of his whole character. As it is evident that we are judged of by our surroundings, it cannot be a matter of indifference what those surroundings are; indeed, so well is this understood, that people are but too prone to " assume a virtue if they have it not; hence all kinds of attempts at displays of taste, and, more commonly still, of wealth and luxury, which, to the refined eye, marks the character of the man at once. Whilst, however, it is easy enough to judge of a man of any individuality by the test of his 66 belongings," yet there is a very large class, indeed by far the largest, who have no individuality at all in such matters; who believe in upholsterers, and who think that all they have to do is to pay the bills, and to buy taste as they would so much meat or sugar. With a full knowledge of their power, these tradesmen dictate the position of the chairs and tables to these customers just as despotically as the modiste dictates the shape bonnets shall be year by year. The upholsterer has certain rules of thumb by which he settles for his customer the minutest details of every room in his house. It may happen that an upholsterer is a man of good taste himself, in which case his customer does well to leave matters in his hands, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he is a mere machine, and goes on one set rule, as though all men were alike in their tastes and habits, and he furnishes them on the same principle that he would furnish dogs'

houses, large or small, according to the size of the inmate, but all on the same identical pattern.

Now, the fashion of our furniture, to our mind, is by no means a matter of indifference. Chairs and tables may be dumb, inanimate things; but, at least, when once bought, they are intended to be our companions for our natural lifetime. Their owner has to make friends of them; he pets them; if well selected, they fit his nature and conform to his habits, but they can only do this when they are the result of his own choice. A man of a refined and sensitive nature may as well marry a woman that had been selected for him by some friend, as fit his house up according to the ideas of some West-end tradesman. Imagine a man of delicate tastes happening to put his new house into the hands of an upholsterer accustomed to fit-up for the fast class of stockbrokers; imagine his despair at finding his walls covered with glaring coloured paper, every inch of furniture as fine as gilding can make it, and all doubled and trebled by pierglasses, reflecting the grandeur in every possible direction. Could he make friends of such fine things as these? Impossible! A man may live among such furniture for ever, and hate every article every day more and more. But there is a lower depth than this, to which the spirit of cheap trading has invited customers to descend; but, happily, the class is so obtuse and dull that they do not feel the degradation. Some of the cheap furniture warehouses issue illustrated catalogues, in which they give estimates for furnishing different-sized houses. A four-roomed house may be furnished, we are told, for 19l. 15s. !

shade of my aunt! why, her Dresden china poodle dog cost more money; a six-roomed house for 671. 17s.; and a ten-roomed ditto for 2891. 10s. 6d. Imagine, good reader, having the self-same set of furniture, from the glaring veneered "bandsome Spanish mahogany sideboard," that is already beginning to shed its veneer at the corners, down to the "two fancy occasional chairs," groggy in their legs with the weight of the varnish they carry ; imagine, I said, having to participate in the comforts of such surroundings, knowing that the five hundred other customers of the firm are lounging in the self-same sticky chairs, and being contorted by the like untrue Brummagem looking-glasses.

It is a remarkable thing, that the lower the price of the articles to be obtained in these cheap furniture warehouses, the finer the design. The Louis Quatorze style, for instance, is universally adopted in such cases. at a loss to account for this, unless it be that

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vulgar people like fine out-of-the-way forms in their chairs and tables, just as they like fine out-of-the-way words in their conversation. Simplicity in tastes is a virtue rarely to be found, excepting in those classes so highly placed as to be able to afford to think as they like.

But, to return to our position, that the majority of persons are entirely in the hands of their upholsterers as to the matter of furnishing. Rules are laid down by these worthies which seem to have no foundation whatever in common sense or sensibility. Pictures, we are told, should generally be hung in the diningroom. This is a dictum which we see almost universally carried out, excepting in those cases where the individual taste of the proprietor is exerted. The fashion is to cover the walls as close as they can hold with pictures, totally regardless of whether they can be seen or not; in fact, it is quite as well, in some instances, that they are placed out of sight; then the guests, at a given signal, are shown into the room, with their backs towards them, and at no moment have they an opportunity of examining their merits. Surely the room devoted to a purely sensual pleasure is the last place to devote to works of art. Artists in spirit, however, never commit this error; the choice picture is hung in a choice place in the drawing-room or the library, and is never degraded into doing duty as a mere article of furniture. The most painful and pitiful aspect of modern furnishing is connected with this question of pictures. Ninety out of every hundred houses boast a certain allowance of works of art.

There is very little artistic feeling in this country, but there is much money, and the rich indulge in "old masters," in order that they may talk about them.

"Look at my 'Murillo,' purchased at the sale of Louis Philippe's collection! "

The picture may be a good one, but it never gave its owner one particle of pleasure as a work of art, because he is incapable of feeling it; but it flatters him to be the known possessor of works that have once adorned palaces.

The rich cotton-lords of the North patronise modern pictures in the same spirit. It is the thousands of pounds they represent, and not their real merit, which gives any satisfaction to their owners. There is another class of men, again, who cannot afford really good works, but who think that anything but oil-paintings are below their dignity. They crowd their dining-rooms with "Raffaelles," and "Guidos," and "Claude Lorraines," picked up for a few pounds at some auction, and are never tired of attempting to palm them off upon their victims

as genuine works. The hideous trash possessed by respectable men in London, who give good dinners, and would, like Dogberry, have "everything handsome about them" at a small cost, is absolutely appalling. The stupidity of the middle-class Englishman in this respect is fathomless, but some soundings with respect to the extent of this folly may be made by watching the advertisements of the sales of the "old masters," which appear every day in the Times. We will venture to say, that more of these pretended "old masters" pass through the hands of our London auctionmarts in the course of the year than all of them have painted for these last five hundred years. If men who wish to adorn their walls with good works, but have no taste or means in that direction, would only put up with good engravings, or photographs of worldfamous pictures, they may, by dint of constantly looking at them, imbibe some of their spirit; at least they would not be able to bore their guests by asking their opinions respecting the merits of their genuine "old masters," just freshly manufactured in the neighbourhood of Wardour Street.

As a rule, the walls of a dining-room should be painted, and for the simple reason, that paint does not, like flock-paper, retain those grosser odours which should depart with the meal. The paper of the drawing-room, in colour at least, should depend upon the degree of light it possesses, and, we will also add, upon the complexions of the young ladies of the family. We have been really startled by the effect given to the head of a brunette by its simple juxtaposition with a yellow wallpaper or curtain. In like manner, the delicate apple-greens suit the fair blonde daughters of England. A friend of mine has his rooms coloured rose du Barri, and this suits nearly everybody, by daylight or candlelight. But he is a man of remarkable taste, and his combinations in other respects are unusually agreeable.

In no article, perhaps, of furniture has so much good taste been expended as in wallpapers. Owen Jones has revolutionised the manufacture, and we can wish for nothing better than his designs.

The upholsterers, ever on the watch to bring forward novelties that require constant renewing, have lately introduced panelled walls, the squares of the panels being fitted up with quilted satin. The style is hot and heavy, and is, moreover, an arrangement which does not admit of hanging pictures—the true ornament of a drawing-room. Upholsterers seem to have an invincible dislike to real art in any form, and to the pictorial art in particular, for

the reason, we suppose, that it interferes with their own handicraft. The articles that furnishing warehouses supply us with that are most obnoxious to good taste, are our curtain hangings and table-cloths. The whole tribe of reps, and tabarets, and merinos are ineffective and vulgar: when covered with designs, they are simply detestable, particularly table-covers, but in all cases the colours are glaring and painful to the eye. Our manufacturing processes are perfect, but the taste which directs them has fallen to a minimum. The rude weavers of Africa and India possess infinitely more refinement in their colours. In the International Exhibition of 1862, in the furniture department, were some specimens of stuffs, manufactured in imitation of old draperies, which immediately struck the eye by the judiciousness of their secondary and tertiary colouring, forming, as they did, such a grateful contrast to the eye, to the hard crimsons and greens of the modern manufacturers. In the same room we saw what common deal was capable of in the hands of the artistic joiner. The fiery mahoganies, which meet the eye wherever we go, have supplanted most other furniture-woods, but it is infinitely inferior in delicacy of colouring to the walnut-wood of our ancestors, and, for some articles, even to the old English oak. The graining of deal is also charming, and we have seen some really artistic articles of furniture made in this materiai, at a cost within the means of all. The turning-lathe has so supplanted the art of design in what we may term the anatomy of our furniture, that to see simple forms, untainted with the set shapes-rings and bulging pear-shaped forms, which turners think essential to beauty is really quite a relief. The Cromwellian chair for the dining-room, for instance, is supplanting all the tribe of seats mounted on balustrade legs; and the Oxford chair, revived from the time of the venerable Bede, shows us what real beauty of form may be attained by a very simple arrangement of parts. In the rooms of an artistic bachelor, now and then, we see designs such as these, which redeem the age from the charge of being utterly ugly in all its domestic details.

The drawing-room, where "taste," that much-abused word, is supposed to reign triumphant, is generally given up to such a medley of monstrosities, that it is without the pale of criticism: settees that are constructed on the pattern of woolsacks; chairs in pinafores, which so cover them up that all sense of form is lost; carpets of gorgeous patterns, cut up in every direction by druggets of conflicting colours; easy-chairs, with quilted backs, in the form of large cockle-shells; and sofas

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patched over with white spots in the shape of anti-macassars. There are very few ladies who appear to have any idea of the harmony of colour, when applied to large surfaces. very same persons who are instinctively excellent with regard to the agreement of colour in their wearing apparel, and who never, in fact, commit a solecism with respect to it, will make the most egregious blunders in the arrangement of colours in their drawing-rooms. It would seem as though their hands were incapable of applying art principles to anything larger than their own personal adornments. Thrift, perhaps, has something to do with the ill taste which covers up every article of furniture with patches of white druggeting, shrouds the gilt of the pier-glass with yellow gauze, and even surrounds the gilt of picture-frames with the same material, totally regardless of the fact that the gaudy and flimsy gambogecoloured covering is sure to kill the effect of the picture, and to transfer the attention of the offending flies to the precious work of art itself a matter they seem to care nothing about. There may be some excuse for that class of persons who seem to think that all their finery should be kept for company; but for persons who can really afford to allow their carpets to wear out in a fair manner, this petty principle of putting everything in pinafores is really contemptible. A well-made carpet or a good chintz will bear the advance of time kindly, and with a grace, just as a good sensible face does. The gentle gradations by which the hangings and the velvets, the gilding and the carpeting, fade and tone down harmoniously together may sometimes be witnessed in households where the fussy spirit of newness is in abeyance. In such apartments the silver grey of age seems at home, and the fresh bloom of youth is only the more brightly set off. Of late years, we must confess, a very great advance has been made in the designs of our carpets of a better class, and the hideous groups of flowers which used to sprawl across small closet-like rooms are no longer to be seen; but among the cheaper articles they seem as bad as ever, and we suppose will continue so until the masses obtain some artcultivation, in which they are now much less advanced than semi-barbarians.

The only articles of domestic use in which a real and universal advance has been made is in glass and stoneware, china, &c. It only seems the other day that we depended upon the barbarous drawings of the Chinese for the designs on our plates. The willow pattern was the standard of taste among the middleclasses; now it is no longer to be seen, at least in respectable houses in the metropolis, and a

hundred designs more or less good have taken its place. We owe this, perhaps, to the length of time art has been made a ruling principle in our potteries: it is now beginning to bear fruit, even to the most humble in the land. We never see such a thing now as an ugly teacup in the better-class china-shops. The same may be said of our manufactured glass. Perhaps there was no department in the Great Exhibition of 1862 which so delighted the connoisseurs of art-manufactures, as the glass department. Sometimes, dining with an old aunt, we are compelled to do the civil thing, and take some of her own-made currant wine out of the wine-glasses bought in her youth, and out of the decanters that suited the tastes of a bygone generation. When we think of their clumsy forms and cloudy colour, it seems as though it must be another race of people who now quaff their champagne or claret from the elegant crystal of our modern manufacturers. If the arts of design have made such an advance in these fragile fabrics, why, we ask, may we not look for similar results among our more substantial domestic appliances ? A chair is as good an object for the application of artistic principles as a cup or a wine-glass; indeed, we see what can be done in certain departments when special and learned classes are catered for. Let us instance church furniture. Never, in the palmiest Roman Catholic days, were articles of this description better made, or of purer design, than by those persons who devote themselves to this class of furniture. It is clear the men who design them are artists who work with love. Pugin struck the note, and since his time it has not degenerated. What a distance divides works such as these from the mere handicraft work! Take, for example, a gaselier, such as a Hardman would provide his customers with, and compare it with a similar article of Brummagem work, to be seen in any ordinary gasfitter's windows. The Brummagem maker throws more twisted work into his design, displays more splendacious cut glass in his shades, ormolus with great redundancy of lacquer; but the whole thing is a frightful botch, giving absolute pain to the artistic mind. Why cannot we impart a little simplicity into such matters? Our schools of design surely cannot be making much progress either with the artisan-class or with their masters, otherwise the world would not be flooded as it is with

such vile designs. We can understand the manufacturers for the cheap furniture warehouses employing certain set patterns, which are easily reproduced by steam machinery in large numbers; but what we cannot understand is the absence of really good designs in

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BY THE AUTHOR OF LIFE AMONGST CONVICTS." PART III.

I WAS musing over the resolute conduct of the Connemara maiden, and on the woman's wit with which she had saved her life and destroyed the monster, Captain Webb, by pushing him, head foremost, into the "Murdering Hole," when I saw in the distance a peasant approaching, driving a pony with a pair of panniers, that were evidently well filled and carefully covered.

"God save you !" said the peasant, a rakishlooking young fellow, with his hat on the side of his head, and an ash stick in his hand.

"God save you kindly, Ned," was young Joyce's reply.

I walked my pony gently on, while the two young men stopped to converse. I had not proceeded far when young Joyce called after me, "Are you dhry, sir?"