ndards without the lavishness of royalty; but
even royalty did not always live in rooms of state, for at Versailles,
and Petit Trianon, there is much simple exquisite furniture. The
wonderful and elaborate furniture of the past must be studied of course,
but to the majority of people, then as now, the simpler expression of
its fundamental lines of beauty are more satisfactory. The trouble
with many houses is that their furnishings are copied from too grand
models, and the effect in an average modern house is unsuitable in every
way. They cannot give the large vistas and appropriate background in
color and proportion which are necessary. Beauty does not depend upon
magnificence.

[Illustration: The warm tones of a brown Chinese wallpaper are
attractive with the mahogany furniture, and the pattern is prevented
from becoming monotonous by the strong rectangular lines of the ivory
woodwork which frames it. The corner cupboard and the exceptionally fine
dining-table and the variety of chairs are interesting.]

If one has to live in a house planned and built by others one often has
to give up some long cherished scheme and adopt something else more
suited to the surroundings. For instance, the rooms of the great French
periods were high, and often the modern house has very low ceilings,
that would not allow space for the cornice, over-doors and correctly
proportioned paneling, that are marked features of those times. Mrs.
Wharton has aptly said: "Proportion is the good breeding of
architecture," and one might add that proportion is good breeding
itself. One little slip from the narrow path into false proportion in
line or color or mass and the perfection of effect is gone.

Proportion is another word for the fitness of things, and that little
phrase, "the fitness of things," is what Alice in Wonderland calls a
"portmanteau" phrase, for it holds so much, and one must feel it
strongly to escape the pitfalls of period furnishing. Most amazing
things are done with perfect complacency, but although the French and
English kings who gave their names to the various periods were far from
models of virtue, they certainly deserved no such cruel punishment as
to have some of the modern rooms, such as we have all seen, called after
them.

The best decorators refuse to mix styles in one room and they thus save
people from many mistakes, but a decorator without a thorough
understanding of the subject, often leads one to disaster. A case