furniture and fittings, and money enough to indulge in the purchase of
an intrinsically good thing instead of a medium one. It means even
something more than the love of beauty and cultivation of it, and that
is a perfect adherence to the _law of appropriateness_.

This is, after all, the most important quality of every kind of
decoration, the one binding and general condition of its accomplishment.
It requires such a careful fitting together of all the means of beauty
as to leave no part of the house, whatever may be its use, without the
same care for appropriate completeness which goes to the more apparent
features. The cellar, the kitchen, the closets, the servants' bedrooms
must all share in the thought which makes the genuinely beautiful home
and the genuinely perfect life. It must be possible to go from the top
to the bottom of the house, finding everywhere agreeable, suitable, and
thoughtful furnishings. The beautiful house must consider the family as
a whole, and not make a museum of rare and costly things in the
drawing-room, the library, the dining-room and family bedrooms, leaving
that important part of the whole machinery, the service, untouched by
the spirit of beauty. The same care in choice of colour will be as well
bestowed on the servants' floor as on those devoted to the family, and
curtains, carpets and furniture may possess as much beauty and yet be
perfectly appropriate to servants' use.

On this upper floor, it goes almost without saying, that the walls must
be painted in oil-colour instead of covered with paper. That the floors
should be uncarpeted except for bedside rugs which are easily removable.
That bedsteads should be of iron, the mattress with changeable covers,
the furniture of painted and enameled instead of polished wood, and in
short the conditions of healthful cleanliness as carefully provided as
if the rooms were in a hospital instead of a private house--but the