ABSTRACT
Many amateurs, especially ladies, feeling a call to convert the nations to the practice of high-toned decoration, expounded their true principles of Art at Home with as much innocent confidence as if the subject had been the trimming of a dress. Of course, their delicate feminine instinct led them to advocate the style of decoration with which they had most acquaintance, and everyone aspiring to a name for taste had her mantelpiece befrilled, draped, and furnished with a convenient apron or curtain to hide the emptiness of the fire-place. The modern architect has, moreover, sometimes to be brother to the keenest of hucksters, so as to be more than a match for the wiliest of builders on the one side, while on the other he claims to rub shoulders with the immortals who designed the Parthenon and gave Europe its grand cathedrals.
