impress the lofty and undying principles of Art upon
the minds of the people."

For a time, in-spite of ridicule, this so-called AEstheticism was the
vogue, and considerably affected the design and decoration of furniture of
the time. Woodwork was painted olive green; the panels of cabinets,
painted in sombre colors, had pictures of sad-looking maidens, and there
was an attempt at a "dim religious" effect in our rooms quite
inappropriate to such a climate as that of England. The reaction, however,
from the garish and ill-considered colourings of a previous decade or two
has left behind it much good, and with the catholicity of taste which
marks the furnishing of the present day, people see some merit in every
style, and are endeavouring to select that which is desirable without
running to the extreme of eccentricity.

Perhaps the advantage thus gained is counterbalanced by the loss of our
old "traditions," for amongst the wilderness of reproductions of French
furniture, more or less frivolous--of Chippendale, as that master is
generally understood--of what is termed "Jacobean" and "Queen Anne"--to
say nothing of a quantity of so-called "antique furniture," we are
bewildered in attempting to identify this latter end of the nineteenth
century with any particular style of furniture. By "tradition" it is
intended to allude to the old-fashioned manner of handing down from father
to son, or master to apprentice, for successive generations, the skill to
produce any particular class of object of Art or manufacture. Surely
Ruskin had something of this in his mind when he said, "Now, when the
powers of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual
dexterity, descend from generation to generation, you have at last what is
not so much a trained artist, as a new species of animal, with whose
instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending."

Tradition may be said to still survive in the country cartwright, who
produces the farmer's wagon in accordance with custom and tradition,
modifying the method of construction somewhat perhaps to meet altered
conditions of circumstances, and then ornamenting his work by no
particular set design or rule, but partly from inherited aptitude and
partly from playfulness or fancy. In the house-carpenter attached to some
of our old English family estates, there will also be found, here and
there, surviving representatives of the traditional "joyner" of the
seventeenth century, and in E