leather, stain and paint our woodwork in leathery and muddy tones, to arrive at what is now a sort of decorator’s god.  Quaintness is the name of that god.  Many are the sins for which he has to answer.  Had we not better worship a deity called beauty, whose place is a little higher up Parnassus?  Why should we not in our endeavors attempt in some measure to transfix the brilliant harmonies that follow the sun in his liberal and gracious course?  This muddy quaintness is certainly pleasant for brief periods, when lamps are low and fire light gilds and deepens its parts.  Turn the sunlight on these so-called triumphs of the modern decorator’s art, and then you feel the lack of many a phase of color that might have been borrowed from the thousand and one examples that in nature he vivifies and makes brilliant.

Referring again to the Ravenna mosaics, I can only add that at the present day an extended palette of colored glass is available.  The technical difficulties are not great, and there is no question as to the fine qualities of design and color that are to be obtained in this material.  The great point in this, as in all other schemes of decoration, is the art, the mental quality of conception, and the sense of color and fitness.  If we hold the precious heritage of an artist’s mind—­that divine and rare something which gives form, color, and completeness to a story, a dream or a vision—­then very little difficulty follows in making vitreous mosaic a valued servant in the realization of a fine creation.

It is the function of architects to design suitable spaces for color decoration, so bound in by dignified mouldings and other details of his constructive art, in such a manner that the addition of decorative color shall in no way mar the scheme of his complete work, but shall (under these well ordered distributions) have set on them the seal and crown of color which is inseparable from a perfect piece of architecture.  In such spaces he may dream his dreams, tell his stories, and stamp on them for centuries his subtilest and divinest thoughts.  May I not urge that to such spaces must be given the best that is in you? for once placed so shall they remain unchanged through generations, time being powerless to add any mellow garment of tone or softening quality whatever.

I mistook the title of the subject in thinking that it was mosaic only, and at the last moment found it was marble and mosaic.  However, the same dominant principles shall underlie the treatment of marble.  It is a question of the finer instincts for form and color.

In recent years the demand for choice decorative materials has been the means of opening out many marble quarries all over the world.  Transit being easy, a large scale of varieties is available.  One fine addition is the Mexican onyx.  My feeling is that the most beautiful marbles are those where the soft and sinuous veins melt and die into the general body, comparatively sharp markings dying right away at the edges into innumerable gradations.  Marbles having strong and hardly marked veins present great difficulties in distribution.  If they are near, they offend you with their coarseness; and, placed at a distance, the hard vein lines have very little decorative value.  I should say use these in narrow slips, with very little moulded profile or as parts of intazzio.