lumber.

These are the things to make one who remembers them critical about the
collections to be found in the antique shops of to-day, and yet such
shops are enticing and fashionable, and the quest of antiques will go on
until we become convinced of the art-value and the equal merit of the
new--which period many things seem to indicate is not far off. In those
days there was but one antique shop in all New York which was devoted to
the sale of old things, to furniture, pictures, statuary, and what
Ruskin calls "portable art" of all kinds. It was a place where one might
go, crying "new lamps for old ones" with a certainty of profit in the
transaction. In later years it has been known as _Sypher's_, and
although one of many, instead of a single one, is still a place of
fascinating possibilities.

To sum up the gospel of furnishing, we need only fall back upon the
principles of absolute fitness, actual goodness, and real beauty. If the
furniture of a well-coloured room possesses these three qualities, the
room as a whole can hardly fail to be lastingly satisfactory. It must be
remembered, however, that it is a trinity of virtues. No piece of
furniture should be chosen because it is intrinsically good or
genuinely beautiful, if it has not also its _use_--and this rule applies
to all rooms, with the one exception of the drawing-room.

The necessity of _use_, governing the style of furnishing in a room, is
very well understood. Thus, while both drawing-room and dining-room must
express hospitality, it is of a different kind or degree. That of the
drawing-room is ceremonious and punctilious, and represents the family
in its relation to society, while the dining-room is far more intimate,
and belongs to the family in its relation to friends. In fact, as the
dining-room is the heart of the house, its furnishing would naturally be
quite different in feeling and character from the drawing-room, although
it might be fully as lavish in cost. It would be stronger, less
conservative, and altogether more personal in its expression. Family
portraits and family silver give the personal note which we like to
recognise in our friends' dining-rooms, because the intimacy of the room
makes even family history in place.

In moderate houses, even the drawing-room is too much a family room to
allow it to be entirely emancipated from the law of use, but in houses
which are not circumscribed in space, and where one or more rooms are
set apar