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show the designer's taste and work, however good it may be ; having many examples of the 

 same, merely suggests one good picture, and so many copies which the ordinary observer cannot 

 distinguish from the original. 



I fear I have lost myself in China, and therefore must hark back to my subject without 

 getting into further digressions. 



It might be asked, what is taste ? Every one has a right to have his idea of this ; but how 

 few seem to possess any of their own. The old saying is that "one fool makes many." Now 

 some one desiring to originate a new idea, might place even dandelions in a conservatory or 

 a drawing-room ; merely to see if he could constitute a fashion ; and I have no doubt if he did 

 (which he had a perfect right to do if he liked), many others would follow his example, but 

 would not be content with copying his questionable good taste, but would go so much further as 

 even to exaggerate it, and turn the whole effect into ridicule. 



Such flowers as the lilies of the valley, from their simplicity of form, their sympathetic leaf, 

 and delicious smell, cannot help attracting the attention of every one, and no one could find 

 fault with any quantity of these anywhere ; but because some one, whose good taste probably 

 was genuine and original, chose to place a flower like a dog-daisy, which really has a very coarse 

 smell and is excessively formal, in his house, from some whim, and has possibly arranged 

 it with some other wild flowers in an unexceptionally good taste so as to look well ; why, I say, 

 every one is therefore to have a bunch of these formal flowers put everywhere, is more than I 

 can find out. Even when the plant is in a corn-field, amongst poppies, though it looks well 

 enough this cannot be its proper place, as it almost always suggests either a rubbish heap or 



