As to the floor: a little time ago it was the universal custom for
those who could afford it to cover it all up into its dustiest and
crookedest corners with a carpet, good, bad, or indifferent. Now I
daresay you have heard from others, whose subject is the health of
houses rather than their art (if indeed the two subjects can be
considered apart, as they cannot really be), you have heard from
teachers like Dr. Richardson what a nasty and unwholesome custom
this is, so I will only say that it looks nasty and unwholesome.
Happily, however, it is now a custom so much broken into that we may
consider it doomed; for in all houses that pretend to any taste of
arrangement, the carpet is now a rug, large it may be, but at any
rate not looking immovable, and not being a trap for dust in the
corners. Still I would go further than this even and get rich
people no longer to look upon a carpet as a necessity for a room at
all, at least in the summer. This would have two advantages: 1st,
It would compel us to have better floors (and less drafty), our
present ones being one of the chief disgraces to modern building;
and 2ndly, since we should have less carpet to provide, what we did
have we could afford to have better. We could have a few real works
of art at the same price for which we now have hundreds of yards of
makeshift machine-woven goods. In any case it is a great comfort to
see the actual floor; and the said floor may be, as you know, made
very ornamental by either wood mosaic, or tile and marble mosaic;
the latter especially is such an easy art as far as mere
technicality goes, and so full of resources, that I think it is a
great pity it is not used more. The contrast between its grey tones
and the rich positive colour of Eastern carpet-work is so beautiful,
that the two together make satisfactory decoration for a room with
little addition.