house were kept in due subjection
as to size, why not all decorations, and especially those representing
the flowers of the field? Certainly in worked decorations flowers
should be no larger than in nature--perhaps on the whole they are best
rather smaller. Botanical monstrosities on the wall dwarf the flowers
in a bow-pot near them, and nature has her own lovely proportions,
which should be studied and respected. These remarks, of course, apply
exclusively to domestic decoration, which is the special object of our
art, and for the guidance of which the suggestions contained in this
chapter are intended.

I would strongly advocate the return to the old system for the
production of large embroideries. If ladies would design, or have
designed for them, curtains or tapestries, and let the work-frame be
the permanent occupier of the morning sitting-room, they might at
least commence works that members of the family or friends might
continue and complete at their leisure; and should they at any time
hang fire, a needlewoman or clever professional worker might be called
in to help to finish it. Thus ladies might assist the art of
needlework by their own original ideas, and give individual beauty to
their homes, and an impetus to the occupation which helps to support
so many of our struggling sisters. The frame or metier is always a
pretty object in the drawing-room or boudoir. The French understand
this well; and make it one of their most useful "properties" in their
scenic representations of refined home life.

I will conclude this chapter with two quotations. The first is part of
Sir Digby Wyatt's advice in a Cambridge Lecture. "You can never hope
(he says) to have the means of supplying yourself with what is
beautiful unless you take pains to add to the production of that
beauty. The colour which the decorative painter" (and the embroiderer
also) "may cast around you is neither more nor less than an atmosphere
in which your eye will be either strengthened or debilitated. If you
accustom your eye only or mainly to contemplate what is satisfactory
in colour and form to the highest tastes, it will gradually become
allured to such delicacy of organization as to reject unintentionally
all that is repugnant to perfect taste."

Mr. Morris, in a lecture to the "Birmingham Society of Arts and School
of Design," says of ugly furnishings: "Herein the rich people have
defrauded themselves as well as the poor. You will see a refine