rally considered beautiful will always be found to have beauties of their own, either of form or of colour or at least of completeness.

Any artist who is fortunate enough to have the entrée to a stove-house will find amongst the varieties of orchids, endless subjects for designs. Not only the colouring but the growth of orchids renders them particularly suited for decorative designs; their curious twisted stems, few leaves, and the singular outline of the flowers lend themselves particularly to this style of art; and an "orchid dado," with a few humming birds or butterflies introduced, would be a thing of beauty well worth making studies for even in the hottest of hothouses.

The ground of floral designs is often "powdered with spots, crosses, and other devices at regular intervals, or intersected by lines; the effect is to give richness and variety to the colour. Sometimes two shades of the same colour are used, sometimes two totally different colours, in which case care must be taken that they form a pleasing tone in combination. Of course all these effects should be tried first on paper, not on the wall itself.

Geometrical designs may be combined with floral, or may be used separately. An unobtrusive geometrical design, in colour just a shade deeper than the ground-tone of the wall, would look well, stencilled over the whole surface, except the dado and

borders, which might be of flowers, conventionally drawn.

The design of campions is meant to be coloured in pink and claret or red brown, the actual colours of flower and leaf; the marking of the ground may be left out if preferred, but these markings give richness. If this pattern be stencilled, I should recommend that two stencil-plates should be cut, one for the flowers and foliage, the other for the groundmarkings. Do this first (say, dark stone on a light stone ground), and when quite dry, place the other stencil-plate in exactly the same position, and go over the leaves and flowers.

V.-JAPANESE.

JAPANESE designs are essentially decorative, which probably accounts for the remarkable rage there has lately been for patterns and art-forms produced by this curious nation. Since the revival of decorative art in England, people turn instinctively to a land where the artists have for centuries worked on designs suited only to this branch of art. I do not mean that the Japanese use these designs on their walls-as they have no walls in our sense of the word, it would be rather strange if they did. I have never been in Japan, but I have been told by a credible witness who has been there, that "interiors are seldom decorated, and when they are lacquer and bronze are largely used. The actual construction of their houses makes interior decoration very difficult; their walls are wood, their partitions for the most part screens of bamboo matting, and their windows and doors are sliding panels of paper." Yet though all this-especially the last item-would be difficult to imitate in England, we may still decorate a room with Japanese designs, though we cannot pretend that it is a counterpart of a Japanese room. All the

forms of ornament used by the Japanese are, I believe, types, natural objects used to signify thoughts. Thus the stork, which is so frequently met with, is the type of longevity, and is naturally a very favourite symbol.

Chrysanthemum is the badge of the Mikado. Trefoil, the badge of the Tycoon (never used now). The lotus typifies purity and oblivion. The bamboo appropriately denotes grace and elegance. The firtree is the emblem of strength and endurance. The dragon, typical of watchfulness-though only found on temples in Japan-might be placed in our room near the door, the position occupied in old classical days by the dog, or at all events by the allusion to it, "cave canem." Caladium leaves are supposed to keep off evil spirits, and are placed near burial-grounds -but more so in China than in Japan. Fusiyama, the holy mountain, crowned with snow, is constantly introduced in decorative design, on boxes, handkerchiefs, saki cups, etc. Ho-ho, a mythical bird with a magnificent tail, is peculiarly adapted for conventional drawing. Any school of art might be grateful for the curves and circles described by this splendid appendage. There is a beautiful coloured drawing of this bird in the Art Journal for August, 1881 (Messrs. Virtue & Co.), where are also to be found illustrations of the god of wealth, and various other idols. These are, however, too grotesquely

hideous to be introduced into a design, unless after sundry modifications; but the bird Ho-ho might easily be arranged so as to form the chief feature in a very effective wall decoration.

The other objects chiefly used as designs are the sun, moon, and stars; insects, more especially locusts, spiders, grasshoppers, glow-worms, lady-birds and butterflies; birds, such as quails, partridges, pheasants, swallows, kites, and storks; birds-nests with eggs, the cotton-plant in flower and seed, the wisteria, the iris, grasses and bulrushes; also branches of floweringtrees, such as the cherry, the thorn, and the willow. Every one knows the manner in which Japanese designs start from nowhere and trail round the corner. One thing is particularly noticeable in Japanese art: it invariably aims at the reproduction of nature in its most exaggerated and grotesque form. They go to nature for everything, and their copies are life-like, but singularly twisted and contorted; they seem to dwarf their ideas as they do their trees, and twist their designs as they do their trailing plants and gnarled roots. Set patterns in the form of arabesques are never used; they seldom carry out any design geometrically to the end, but place design on design in a deliciously confused manner; they seem to abhor making anything to match exactly.

There will be no difficulty in getting any number of Japanese patterns, in these days when they are to