painting is more expensive, from the number of coats used; but in all these processes the workmen's wages form the chief item of expense, the actual materials cost but little. And it is not what it has cost that will make the room satisfactory or otherwise afterwards, but the amount of skill and thought that has been bestowed upon it. I have given the price, as far as possible, of every article required in the various styles of house decoration; and if some of the directions I have given may seem too minute, " things that everybody knows," I can only say that when I am told how to do a thing, I like to be told exactly; if anything is left to my inner consciousness, I am apt to make a bad use of that faculty, take a wrong view of the situation, and make some absurd mistake, laughable to others perhaps, but provoking to the sufferer. I have no doubt but that most of my readers will agree with me that it is better to be on the safe side, and be told too much rather than too little.

ON STYLES OF DECORATION.

I. CELTIC.

A FEW years since the idea prevailed that everything English was Anglo-Saxon. Our literature was Anglo-Saxon, our victories were Anglo-Saxon, and our ancestors—at least the only ones worth counting -were Anglo-Saxon, or ought to have been so. Any other ingredient in that composite production, the British nation, was ignored. Yet to that portion of the community who are not so exclusively and aggressively Saxon, and who are willing to allow that we are a mixed people, it may be pleasant to find that their Celtic forefathers even in very remote times were not quite rude barbarians, but that they had ideas of beauty, and a very large amount of that true love of art which expresses itself in most patient and painstaking labour. Where work has been done because the very execution of it was an act of worship, it carries something with it down through all the ages which impresses the observer with a very different feeling from that produced by the paid-forby-the-hour-and-scamped-at-that labour of the present

day.

The carvings of these long-ago Celts are wonder

fully intricate and beautiful. Their art, like all art that has lasted many centuries, was strictly decorative; and it usually took the form of carvings in stone or in metals. The patterns consist of various knots, combined and interlaced with marvellous effect. It suggests the idea that the artist may have taken a piece of rope, twisted and knotted it into all graceful forms of interweaving, and then copied it in raised relief on his piece of stone, leaving a lasting monument of untiring accuracy and patience. Some of these designs are particularly suitable for wall decorations. I have copied a few, some of which are intended for borders, others for powdering all over the surface of the wall. These designs are chiefly taken from a cross in Nevern churchyard (North Pembrokeshire); they were drawn from the cross itself, but were corrected and finished up from an excellent plate in the "Archælogia Cambrensis," vol. vi. Nothing could be more appropriate for the dado of a room in this style than designs from the history of Arthur and his knights, that old British story which has furnished Europe with legends and lyrics. I am supposing that the decorator is sufficiently an artist to draw these designs; the colour need not trouble him, monotone or two shades would be amply sufficient. The border immediately above the dado might be filled with words (describing the pictures beneath) in the Ogam character, the oldest form of writing used in these