Flowers are peculiarly suitable to any decoration where brilliancy of colour is the thing to be desired, -flowers drawn in a somewhat stiff and conventional manner, each leaf drawn separately, and not perhaps exactly where Nature would have placed it, but where conventionally we feel assured a leaf should be placed. Studies from plants according to this plan will be found a very interesting occupation. Of course only one sort of plant will be placed in each panel, or the effect will be "tea-tray" in style.

Many flowering trees are excellently adapted as studies for conventional designs, as the medlar tree, the service tree, and the barberry. Besides such very well-known plants as sun-flowers and lilies, we may profitably study the clematis, chrysanthemum, and such stately plants as the Eastern poppy, single dahlias, or the white Japanese anemone. Scarlet or gold-coloured flowers look best on a black door; on an oak-coloured one more delicate shades have a pleasing effect—for instance, apple-blossom, weigelias, or azaleas. The ground of the panels may be different from the general colour of the door, but of course all the panels must be of the same ground colour. All the flowers and leaves should be outlined with narrow black lines. Figures also look well, but are much more difficult to accomplish satisfactorily. They also must be outlined, must be

kept somewhat flat, and the colours used must be brilliant and well-contrasting ones. A background of gold or bronze looks well.

DECORATIVE ART.

IN conclusion, it will not be out of place to say a few words on various styles of decoration. As yet we have only considered different methods of decoration-different materials with which to work; this is, as it were, the body of our undertaking, but the soul is still lacking. To express this soul, we turn to the past, and observe how various nations in various times have shown their thoughts by outward signs. The art of expressing clearly what is in our own minds, even in words, is a rather uncommon power, still more so is the art of giving an outward form to our idea of beauty. This is a priceless gift bestowed on so few (and those generally the high priests of the temple who have given up their lives to the study of their goddess) that to the great majority even of cultured people the only advice to be given is "select good designs and copy them." Originality is rarely to be met with in the nineteenth century, and perhaps less among cultured people than any others. The very studies they have made, all their researches into the art forms of many nations and many centuries, render absolute originality al

most an impossibility. A savage must be original, or nothing. Putting, therefore, new ideas and creations on one side, let us consider some of the styles already well known to the world, with a view to their adaptability to the decoration of our own houses.

Our rooms, as a rule, are either furnished in no style at all (or rather in a heterogeneous style composed of a mélange of articles from all parts of the world), or else in the heavy tasteless style which has come down to us as a lingering legacy from the Georgian era when the taste of the first gentleman in Europe was held to be supreme.

Of course some people prefer variety in their rooms, as giving diversified interests and manifold ideas; but I think unity, when fairly tried, will be found more satisfying. Take, for instance, a handsome country house built in the Italian or Greek style. It is obvious that the classical manner of decoration-dadoes, friezes, statues in niches, etc.—will suit such a house as nothing else would, yet it is very seldom that you see one decorated in this style throughout. The same unity might easily be preserved in an Elizabethan or Queen Anne mansion. Perhaps one might draw the line at the Georges; the outside of the house would probably be hideous enough without having the furniture to match. But to come down to less ambitious dwellings, there are numbers of houses, especially in towns, of no style