89 
SOIREE. HOUSE DECORATION. 
Director, T. PRESTON. December 2nd, 1884. 
The following is a resumé of the paper read on the occasion 
by Mr. Preston, entitled: ‘‘ Mural Decoration in connection with 
our Domestic Architecture.” 
A really perfect form or a beautiful combination of colours 
instinctively yields us delight and extorts a spontaneous acknow- 
ledgment of joy, admiration, and often gratitude. Writing 
recently Mr. P. G. Hamerton says ‘‘we are beginning to under- 
stand artistic relativity, to feel sesthetic pleasure when it is 
observed, and eesthetic suffering or discontent when it is violated.” 
This change has been brought about mainly by the efforts of a few 
of our leading artists, art critics, and decorators, to disseminate 
correct views, and furnish decorative examples more in accordance 
with esthetical requirements,—assisted by the advance of general 
culture. 
The best art education is to be found in recourse to approved 
examples of decoration. 
Mural painting is a special kind of art, harmonizing perfectly 
with architecture. 
Mural decoration was practised in very ancient times; the 
wall decoration in Egypt, not less than 4,000 years old, shews not 
merely outline drawing but also painting in colour. The people 
of Phenicia, and Assyria, of Persia, India, and China were all 
acquainted with the art of painting, which was always symbolical, 
and used as an accessory to architecture. Properly to understand 
the mural decoration of Eng!and it is necessary to consider the 
wonderful and diversified story of the origin and progress of our 
domestic architecture. The flimsy alcoves of the ancient Britons 
were followed by the wattle and clay huts, which in their turn 
were superseded by the cobwall building with thatched roof. The 
next advance consisted of covering both sides of the wattled walls 
with wet clay—much after the style which was in vogue in the 
_ middle ages to plaster the rude studding which divided the rooms. 
An example of this plaster composed of reeds with rudely impro- 
vised mortar daubed over them may be seen in the house next to 
the White Hart Inn, in Church Street—probably the oldest house 
in Burnley. 
The decorative arts in England may be said to have made a 
start with the advent of the Romans. The more important 
Romans in Britain had their houses painted and decorated after the 
manner of those found in such a perfect state at Pompeii. The 
_ general style of wall decoration consisted of a low dado, above 
_ which broad pilasters divided the wall into three or four compart- 
_ ments, the pilasters being united at the top by a frieze; the panels 
