G 
Ri/stic Adornments . 
law which should control domestic architecture, save and except the one 
primary law that a house must have a foundation. However, in this matter 
we witness the beginning of a revival; true taste has ceased to be esoteric, 
and in all our cities evidences abound, to testify that our people are not 
satisfied with bread alone, but crave the heavenly teaching of beauty as a 
reflex of the divine nature. Art is religious or it is nothing, every touch of 
grace in outward form is a rebuke to sinfulness, every work of art is a minister 
of morals to those who can understand. 
Lord Bacon says, “ Every man’s proper mansion, house, and home, being 
the theatre of his hospitality, the seat of his selfe-fruition, the comfortablest 
part of his own life, the noblest of his sonne’s inheritance, a kind of private 
princedom ; nay to the possessors thereof, an epitome of the whole world, 
may well deserve, by these attributes, according to the degree of the master, 
to be decently and delightfully adorned.” 
Wealth is certainly a blessing when it is made the instrument of increasing 
human happiness, and in the gratification of a love of elegance money is 
certainly a powerful instrument. Still the Home of Taste is within the reach 
of all, it is the mind more than the money that must make it. Spiritual life 
will give radiance to a cottage, pure pleasures will sweeten the humblest lot, 
while the noblest productions of genius may even contribute to the gloom of 
the mansion, where moral and religious worth are unknown. Whatsoever we 
look upon reflects our own mood, we see ourselves perpetually, as if all nature 
and art were but repetitions of a mirror. 
“ Our sleeping visions, waking dreams, 
Receive their shape and hue from what 
Surrounds our life.” 
Where the counsels of wisdom preside over parental love, where those “ whom 
God has united ” remain in unity under the bonds of a beautiful affection, 
than which 
“ All other pleasures are not worth its pains ; ” 
where woman appears in her true gentleness, and the children grow up in the 
love of parents and the fear of God, there is a Home of Taste, a Home of 
Virtue, of Mental Discipline, of Moral Worth, Domestic Affection, and 
Religious Aspiration. “ Round it all the Muses sing; ” everything within 
takes the semblance of the souls that preside over it; the simplest things 
acquire grace and meaning ; vulgarity, meanness, and vice dare not cross the 
