transparently with success, and its natural colour is poor, and will
not enter into any scheme of decoration, while polishing it makes it
worse. In short, it is such a poor material that it must be hidden
unless it be used on a big scale as mere timber. Even then, in a
church roof or what not, colouring it with distemper will not hurt
it, and in a room I should certainly do this to the wood-work of
roof and ceiling, while I painted such wood-work as came within
touch of hand. As to the colour of this, it should, as a rule, be
of the same general tone as the walls, but a shade or two darker in
tint. Very dark wood-work makes a room dreary and disagreeable,
while unless the decoration be in a very bright key of colour, it
does not do to have the wood-work lighter than the walls. For the
rest, if you are lucky enough to be able to use oak, and plenty of
it, found your decoration on that, leaving it just as it comes from
the plane.

Now, as you are not bound to use anything for the decoration of your
walls but simple tints, I will here say a few words on the main
colours, before I go on to what is more properly decoration, only in
speaking of them one can scarce think only of such tints as are fit
to colour a wall with, of which, to say truth, there are not many.

Though we may each have our special preferences among the main
colours, which we shall do quite right to indulge, it is a sign of
disease in an artist to have a prejudice against any particular
colour, though such prejudices are common and violent enough among
people imperfectly educated in art, or with naturally dull
perceptions of it. Still, colours have their ways in decoration, so
to say, both positively in themselves, and relatively to each man's
way of using them. So I may be excused for setting down some things