using more than one pattern in one room, unless one of them be but a
breaking of the surface with a pattern so insignificant as scarce to
be noticeable. I have seen a good deal of the practice of putting
pattern over pattern in paper-hangings, and it seems to me a very
unsatisfactory one, and I am, in short, convinced, as I hinted just
now, that cheap recurring patterns in a material which has no play
of light in it, and no special beauty of its own, should be employed
rather sparingly, or they destroy all refinement of decoration and
blunt our enjoyment of whatever beauty may lie in the designs of
such things.

Before I leave this subject of the spacing out of the wall for
decoration, I should say that in dealing with a very high room it is
best to put nothing that attracts the eye above a level of about
eight feet from the floor--to let everything above that be mere air
and space, as it were. I think you will find that this will tend to
take off that look of dreariness that often besets tall rooms.

So much then for the spacing out of our wall. We have now to
consider what the covering of it is to be, which subject, before we
have done with it, will take us over a great deal of ground and lead
us into the consideration of designing for flat spaces in general
with work other than picture work.

To clear the way, I have a word or two to say about the treatment of
the wood-work in our room. If I could I would have no wood-work in
it that needed flat painting, meaning by that word a mere paying it
over with four coats of tinted lead-pigment ground in oils or
varnish, but unless one can have a noble wood, such as oak, I don't
see what else is to be done. I have never seen deal stained