enjoy or wish to enjoy, and will not take our domestic environment at
second hand. It follows that there is a certain difference and
originality in our methods, which bids fair to acquire distinct
character, and may in the future distinguish this art-loving period as a
maker of style.

A successful foreign painter who has visited this country at intervals
during the last ten years said, "There is no such uniformity of
beautiful interiors anywhere else in the world. There are palaces in
France and Italy, and great country houses in England, to the
embellishment of which generations of owners have devoted the best art
of their own time; but in America there is something of it everywhere.
Many unpretentious houses have drawing-rooms possessing
colour-decoration which would distinguish them as examples in England or
France."

To Americans this does not seem a remarkable fact. We have come into a
period which desires beauty, and each one secures it as best he can. We
are a teachable and a studious people, with a faculty of turning
"general information" to account; and general information upon art
matters has had much to do with our good interiors.

We have, perhaps half unconsciously, applied fundamental principles to
our decoration, and this may be as much owing to natural good sense as
to cultivation. We have a habit of reasoning about things, and acting
upon our conclusions, instead of allowing the rest of the world to do
the reasoning while we adopt the result. It is owing to this conjunction
of love for and cultivation of art, and the habit of materializing what
we wish, that we have so many thoroughly successful interiors, which
have been accomplished almost without aid from professional artists. It