workman, and the workman, feeling the appreciation, comes to know
more of the nobility of his work.

You have too many white walls. More colour is wanted. You should
have such men as Whistler among you to teach you the beauty and joy
of colour. Take Mr. Whistler's 'Symphony in White,' which you no
doubt have imagined to be something quite bizarre. It is nothing
of the sort. Think of a cool grey sky flecked here and there with
white clouds, a grey ocean and three wonderfully beautiful figures
robed in white, leaning over the water and dropping white flowers
from their fingers. Here is no extensive intellectual scheme to
trouble you, and no metaphysics of which we have had quite enough
in art. But if the simple and unaided colour strike the right
keynote, the whole conception is made clear. I regard Mr.
Whistler's famous Peacock Room as the finest thing in colour and
art decoration which the world has known since Correggio painted
that wonderful room in Italy where the little children are dancing
on the walls. Mr. Whistler finished another room just before I
came away - a breakfast room in blue and yellow. The ceiling was a
light blue, the cabinet-work and the furniture were of a yellow
wood, the curtains at the windows were white and worked in yellow,
and when the table was set for breakfast with dainty blue china
nothing can be conceived at once so simple and so joyous.

The fault which I have observed in most of your rooms is that there
is apparent no definite scheme of colour. Everything is not
attuned to a key-note as it should be. The apartments are crowded
with pretty things which have no relation to one another. Again,
your artists must decorate what is more simply useful. In your art
schools I found no attempt to decorate such things as the vessels