. ART— FROM A PRACTICAL STANDPOINT. 433 



photographs are such a boon to America. A few of them, with the addition of 

 some good engravings and etchings hung upon the walls — not of the drawing 

 room alone, unless one is a person of very elegant leisure and spends most of 

 one's time there — but upon those of the sitting room, kitchen, and nursery, if 

 need be, will be a constant source of elevation and refinement of taste. Few 

 people realize how sensitive their own minds are to impressions, impression* too 

 subtile to be felt or recorded at the time of receiving them. If they did they 

 would be more careful of their own environments, and fewer Americans would 

 rush through the British museum and the Louvre, naming the Elgin marbles and 

 Venus of Milo " stumps," bringing home, one might add, no strong remem- 

 brance of foreign scenes, except the determination to serve wine with dinner 

 henceforth. 



But perhaps we are improving in regard to "environments." There is a 

 great furore nowadays for artistic furnishing, a "craze" for Eastlake designs, 

 painted tapestries, and bric-a-brac, without which the perfect mansion is 

 believed to be very incomplete, and concerning which one sometimes feels like 

 asking, is this all that constitutes the proper furnishing of our interiors ? We 

 hear very frequently the phrase, " O, she has such a lovely, artistic home" — a 

 phrase which upon investigation is often found to mean a home where the ordi- 

 nary accessories of curtains, hangings, ornaments and furniture generally are 

 combined and grouped with unusual hjrmony, and where too frequently the frig- 

 idity of the perfection tells a sad tale of the extent to which the house is aban- 

 doned and forsaken by its owners and enjoyers, for the sake of preserving its 

 treasures intact; for while the horrible parlor of our grandmothers is rapidly 

 vanishing before the advance of civilization, the combination of poor servants 

 and a desire for elegance, induces many a housekeeper to fill her whole lower 

 floor with all the pretty things she can collect, after which, for the sake of keep- 

 ing it in order, she deliberately shuts out the sun, the children, and that charm 

 of her own occupancy which does more than anything else to render an apart- 

 ment cozy and inviting, restricting her family — and especially the childish por- 

 tion of it — to rooms devoid of ornament or pleasant aspect. Now is this all very 

 wrong, but especially wrong in regard to the little ones, particularly if the owner 

 of such a home is aware of the very decided difference which exists between 

 prettiness and artistic beauty, between the artistic harmony of form and color 

 which appeals only to the senses, and the high intellectual quality which appeals 

 to and educates the loftiest part of our nature. 



It is in this latter quality that a home should be artistic. Its walls should 

 not only be softly and harmoniously frescoed and papered, but they should be 

 covered— not ornamented only — with pictures which educate the senses by their 

 beauty and rouse the purest sentiments by their silent and never ceasing appeals. 

 Let the curtains, the furniture, the bric-a-brac be ever so beautiful, if the other 

 element is lacking the individuality of the home is gone, for while an upholsterer 

 of taste and intelligence can do all the rest for us, we can not hire any one to take 

 the place of our own educated taste. In this country such home adornments 



