INTERIOR DECORATIONS. 225 



that sounded familiarly to us, and after a moment s thought 

 we both remembered it to be that of the single nobleman 

 whom an antiquarian friend had informed us that our family 

 had been, long before its emigration with the Plymouth Pil 

 grims, by marriage connected with. If it had been a Scotch 

 castle, we might perhaps have felt ourselves a good deal more 

 at home in consequence. It was an odd coincidence, and 

 made us realize the relationship of our democracy even to 

 aristocratic England quite vividly.* 



In consideration of this I think I may say a few words of 

 the private apartments of the family, through nearly all which, 

 apparently, we were shown. They were comparatively small, 

 not larger, or more numerous, or probably as expensively fur 

 nished as those of many of our wealthy New York mercantile 

 families ; but some of them were very delightful, and would 

 be most tempting of covetousness to a man of domestic tastes 

 or to a lover of art or- of literary ease. Generally there was 

 most exquisite taste evident in colours and arrangements and 

 forms of furniture, and there were proofs of high artistic skill 

 in some members of the family, as well as a general love and 

 appreciation of the beautiful and the excellent. Some of the 

 rooms were painted in very high colours, deep blue and 

 scarlet and gold, and in bizarre figures and lines. I hardly 

 could tell how it would please me if I were accustomed to it, 

 but I did not much admire it at first sight ; it did not seem 

 English or home-like. It is just the thing for New York 

 though, and I have no doubt you ll soon see the fashion in 

 troduced there, and dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, counting- 

 rooms, and steamboat state-rooms all equally flaring. 



* In speaking of our relationship as a nation to England, I do not mean 

 to ignore our relationship also to other nations. I think Mr. Eobinson 

 has very conclusively proved that, taking the people of the United States 

 altogether, the majority are by no means of Anglo-Saxon origin. 



