quite grey in these materials, and in no case very dark, trusting
for richness to stuffs, or to painting which allows of gilding being
introduced.

I must finish these crude notes about general colour by reminding
you that you must be moderate with your colour on the walls of an
ordinary dwelling-room; according to the material you are using, you
may go along the scale from light and bright to deep and rich, but
some soberness of tone is absolutely necessary if you would not
weary people till they cry out against all decoration. But I
suppose this is a caution which only very young decorators are
likely to need. It is the right-hand defection; the left-hand
falling away is to get your colour dingy and muddy, a worse fault
than the other because less likely to be curable. All right-minded
craftsmen who work in colour will strive to make their work as
bright as possible, as full of colour as the nature of the work will
allow it to be. The meaning they may be bound to express, the
nature of its material, or the use it may be put to may limit this
fulness; but in whatever key of colour they are working, if they do
not succeed in getting the colour pure and clear, they have not
learned their craft, and if they do not see their fault when it is
present in their work, they are not likely to learn it.

Now, hitherto we have not got further into the matter of decoration
than to talk of its arrangement. Before I speak of some general
matters connected with our subject, I must say a little on the
design of the patterns which will form the chief part of your
decoration. The subject is a wide and difficult one, and my time
much too short to do it any justice, but here and there, perhaps, a
hint may crop up, and I may put it in a way somewhat new.