e same unfettered freedom in
construction. He cannot always adapt his house either to the physical or
mental size of his family, but must accept what is possible with much
the same feeling with which a family of robins might accommodate
themselves to a wren's nest, or an oriole to that of a barn-swallow. But
the fact remains, that all these accidental homes must, in some way, be
brought into harmony with the lives to be lived in them, and the habits
and wants of the family; and not only this, they must be made attractive
according to the requirements of cultivated society. The effort toward
this is instructive, and the pleasure in and enjoyment of the home
depends upon the success of the effort. The inmates, as a rule, are
quite clear as to what they want to accomplish, but have seldom had
sufficient experience to enable them to remedy defects of construction.

There are expedients by which many of the malformations and uglinesses
of the ordinary "builder's house" may be greatly ameliorated, various
small surgical operations which will remedy badly planned rooms, and
dispositions of furniture which will restore proportion. We can even, by
judicious distribution of planes of colour, apparently lower or raise a
ceiling, and widen or lengthen a room, and these expedients, which
belong partly to the experience of the decorator, are based upon laws
which can easily be formulated. Every one can learn something of them by
the study of faulty rooms and the enjoyment of satisfactory ones.
Indeed, I know no surer or more agreeable way of getting wisdom in the
art of decoration than by tracing back sensation to its source, and
finding out why certain things are utterly satisfactory, and certain
others a positive source of discomfort.

In what are called the "best houses" we can make our deductions quite
as well as in the most faulty, and sometimes get a lesson of avoidance
and a warning against law-breaking which will be quite as useful as if
it were learned in less than the best.

There is one fault very common in houses which date from a period of
some forty or fifty years back, a fault of disproportionate height of
ceilings. In a modern house, if one room is large enough to require a
lofty ceiling, the architect will manage to make his second floor upon
different levels, so as not to inflict the necessary height of large
rooms upon narrow halls and small rooms, which should have only a height
proportioned to their size. A ten