a dozen shades of green and brown artfully blended, streaming down in graceful garlands and sprays towards a dado about four feet from the ground. It was a lofty room, and the curtains, screens, &c., were made to match, of chintz, with sprays of ivy, and a similar border. I know other bedroom walls where fluted white muslin is stretched over pink or blue silk (prettiest of all over an apple-green batiste). I dislike tapestry extremely for bedroom walls; the designs are generally of a grim and ghostly nature, and even if they represent simpering shepherds and shepherdesses, they are equally tiresome. There is a Japanese paper, sometimes used for curtains, which really looks more suitable and pretty when serving as wall-hangings in the bedrooms of a country house. I know a whole wing of “bachelors’ quarters” papered by fluted Japanese curtains, and they are exceedingly pretty. The curtains of these rooms are of workhouse sheeting lined and bordered with Turkey red, and leave nothing to be desired for quaint simplicity and brightness. I must ease my mind by declaring here that I have a strong prejudice against Japanese paper except when used in this way for wall-decoration. The curtains made of it are not only a sham, pretending to be something which they are not—a heinous crime in my eyes—but they are generally of very ugly patterns, and hang in stiff, ungraceful folds, crackling and rustling with every breath of air, besides being exceedingly inflammable.

Of course the first rule in bedroom decoration, as in all other, is that it should be suitable to the style of the house, and even to the situation in which the house finds itself. The great point in the wall-decoration of a town bedroom is that you should be able to replace it easily when it gets dirty, as it is sure to do very soon if your windows are kept sufficiently open. I have known people who kept the windows of both bed and sitting-rooms always shut for fear of soiling the walls. I prefer walls, under such conditions, which can be cheaply made clean again perpetually. There are wall-papers by the score, artistically simple enough to please a correct taste, and sufficiently cheap not to perceptibly shrink the shallowest purse.

But in the country it is every one’s own fault if they have not a lovely bedroom. If it be low, then let the paper be suitable—something which will not dwarf the room. I know a rural bedroom with a paper representing a trellis and Noisette roses climbing over it; the carpet is shades of green without any pattern, and has only a narrow border of Noisette roses; the bouquets, powdered on the chintzes, match, and outside the window a spreading bush of the same dear old-fashioned rose blooms three parts of the year. That is a bower indeed, as well as a bedroom. Noisette roses and rosebuds half smothered in leaves have been painted by the skilful fingers of the owner of this room on the door-handles and the tiles of the fireplace as well as embroidered on the white quilt and the green cover of the writing-table. But then I acknowledge it is an exceptionally pretty room to begin with, for the dressing-table stands in a deep bay window, to which you ascend by a couple of steps. Belinda herself could not have desired a fairer shrine whereat to worship her own beauty.

The memory of other walls rises up before me; even of one with plain white satiny paper bordered by shaded pink ribbon, not merely the stiff paper-hanger’s design, but cut out and fixed in its place by a pair of clever hands. This border of course looked different to anything else of the kind I had ever seen; but according to strict rules of modern taste it was not “correct.” Yet a great deal depends on the way a thing is done. I see the Misses Garrett frowning as I go on to say that here and there a deep shadow was painted under it, and its bows and ends drooped down at the corners of the room, whilst over the fireplace they made the bright, circling border for a chalk drawing of a rosy child’s head. But it was a pretty room, notwithstanding its original faulty design, and I describe it more as an illustration of the supremacy of a real genius for decoration over any hard and fast rule than as an example to be copied. Rules are made for people who cannot design for themselves, and original designs may be above rules, though they should never be above taste.

I might go on for ever describing bedroom walls instead of only insisting on their possessing the cardinal virtues of cleanliness and appropriateness. Whether of satin or silk, of muslin or chintz, or of cheapest paper, nothing can be really pretty and tasteful in wall-decoration which is not scrupulously clean, without being cold and glaring, and it should be in harmony with even the view from the windows. Every room should possess an air of individuality—some distinctive features in decoration which would afford a clue to the designer’s and owner’s special tastes and fancies. How easy it is to people old rooms with the imaged likeness of those who have dwelt in them, and how difficult it would be to do as much for a modern bower!

If I had my own way, I would accustom boys as well as girls to take a pride in making and keeping their bedrooms as pretty and original as possible. Boys might be encouraged to so arrange their collections of eggs, butterflies, beetles, and miscellaneous rubbish, as to combine some sort of decorative principle with this sort of portable property. And I would always take care that a boy’s room was so furnished and fitted that he might feel free, there at least, from the trammels of good furniture. He should have bare boards with only a rug to stand on at the bed-side and fireplace, but he should be encouraged to make with his own hands picture-frames, bookcases, brackets, anything he liked, to adorn his room, and this room should be kept sacred to his sole use wherever and whenever it was possible to do so. Girls might also be helped to make and collect tasteful little odds and ends of ornamental work for their own rooms, and shown the difference between what is and is not artistically and intrinsically valuable, either for form or colour. It is also an excellent rule to establish that girls should keep their rooms neat and clean, dust their little treasures themselves, and tidy up their rooms before leaving them of a morning, so that the servant need only do the rougher work. Such habits are valuable in any condition of life. An eye so trained that disorder or dirt is hideous to it, and a pair of hands capable of making such conditions an impossibility in their immediate neighbourhood, need be no unworthy addition to the dowry of a princess.

CHAPTER II.
CARPETS AND DRAPERIES.

IN the very old-fashioned, stately rooms of Queen Anne’s reign the carpeting was doled out in small proportions, and a somewhat comfortless air must have prevailed where an expanse of floor was covered here and there by what we should now characterise as a shabby bit of carpeting. In fact a suitable floor-covering or appropriate draperies for these old