from its
surroundings, and asserting that separation, is the desirable effect
to be attained.

A totally different set of rules come into play when we have to select
the decorations of a bedroom. Here a background does not exist. We are
surrounded by four walls very near to the eye, so that perspectives
are a secondary interest, if indeed they can claim any consideration;
severe and magnificent ornamentation is out of place, except perhaps
in that time-honoured institution--to be found in every great house
possessing a suite of reception-rooms--the State bedroom, where the
display of hangings and embroideries was the first motive of the
decoration of the past, clothing and garnishing the bare spaces on the
lofty walls. Space and separateness are not the object or aim of the
bedroom of to-day; but lightness, snugness, and cheerful comfort, with
which the design of the textile ornaments have much to do. This will
in a later chapter come under the head of furniture.

For the saloon we may accept any splendour of rich and costly design,
and the variously shaped panels assist in suggesting the form of the
decoration. The plain or moulded panels, called in Italian "targhe,"
or shields, seem to be descended from the actual shields of gold which
Solomon hung on the walls of the king's house in the Forest of
Lebanon.[94] The motive was apparently Tyrian, and traces of it are
also to be found in Assyrian sculpture.[95]

The practice of framing the design gives opportunities for change of
materials, colour, and pattern, permitting the employment of different
flat surfaces laid on each other, and scope for endless enrichment;
the framed picture being, perhaps, the central culminating attraction,
crowning, as it were, the textile ornamentation.

I merely give these instances as illustrating the rule that we have
more than once laid down, that a design cannot fitly be employed
except in the position for which the artist has composed it. I will,
however, add that though it is right to give due consideration to the
preparation of each work for its intended use, yet we often have
charming suggestions offered to us, by the chance acquisition of a
beautiful artistic specimen, which finds its own place and
accommodates itself to the surrounding colours and forms. These are
the happy accidents of which the cultivated artistic eye takes
advantage, adding them to the experience which may help those who are
seeking for the rules of harmo