e harmony, like the
brown waves of a landscape at evening tipped with the fire of a sunset
sky.

Much is to be learned from a room like this, in the lesson of unity and
concentration of effect. The strongest, and in fact the only, mass of
vital colour is in the carpet, which is allowed to play upwards, as it
were, into draperies, and furniture, and frieze, none of which show the
same depth and intensity. To the concentration of light in the one great
window we must give the credit of the Rembrandt-like effect of the whole
interior. If the walls were less rich, this single flood of light would
be a defect, because it would be difficult to treat a plain surface with
colour alone, which should be equally good in strong light and deep
shadow.

[Illustration: DINING-ROOM IN NEW YORK HOME SHOWING CARVED WAINSCOTTING
AND PAINTED FRIEZE]

Then, again, the amount of living and brilliant colour is exactly
proportioned to that of sombre brown, the red holding its value by
strength, as against the greatly preponderating mass of dark. On the
whole this may be called a "picture-room," and yet it is distinctly
liveable, lending itself not only to hospitality and ceremonious
function but also to real domesticity. It is true that there is a
certain obligation in its style of beauty which calls for fine manners
and fine behaviour, possibly even, behaviour in kind; for it is in the
nature of all fine and exceptional things to demand a corresponding
fineness from those who enjoy them.

I will give still another dining-room as an example of colour, which,
unlike the others, is not modern, but a sort of falling in of old
gentility and costliness into lines of modern art--one might almost say
it _happened_ to be beautiful, and yet the happening is only an
adjustment of fine old conditions to modern ideas. Yet I have known many
as fine a room torn out and refitted, losing thereby all the inherent
dignity of age and superior associations.

A beautiful city home of seventy years ago is not very like a beautiful
city home of to-day; perhaps less so in this than in any other country.
The character of its fineness is curiously changed; the modern house is
fitted to its inmates, while the old-fashioned house, modelled upon the
early eighteenth century art of England, obliged the inmates to fit
themselves as best they might to a given standard.

The dining-room I speak of belongs to the period when Washington Square,
New York, was still surro