The difficulty of altering this unsatisfactory state of things is evident.  On the one side, the manufacturers or the large furnishing firms have a strong case in their contention that the public will go to the market it considers the best:  and when decoration is pitted against simplicity, though the construction which accompanies the former be ever so faulty, the more pretentious article will be selected.  When a successful pattern has been produced, and arrangements and sub-contracts have been made for its repetition in large quantities, any considerable variation made in the details (even if it be the suppression of ornament) will cause an addition to the cost which those only who understand something of a manufacturer’s business can appreciate.

During the present generation an Art movement has sprung up called AEstheticism, which has been defined as the “Science of the Beautiful and the Philosophy of the Fine Arts,” and aims at carrying a love of the beautiful into all the relations of life.  The fantastical developments which accompanied the movement brought its devotees into much ridicule about ten years ago, and the pages of Punch of that time will be found to happily travesty its more amusing and extravagant aspects.  The great success of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, “Patience,” produced in 1881, was also to some extent due to the humorous allusions to the extravagances of the “Aesthetetes.”  In support of what may be termed a higher AEstheticism, Mr. Ruskin has written much to give expression to his ideas and principles for rendering our surroundings more beautiful.  Sir Frederic Leighton and Mr. Alma Tadema are conspicuous amongst those who have in their houses carried such principles into effect, and amongst other artists who have been and are, more or less, associated with this movement, may be named Rossetti, Burne Jones, and Holman Hunt.  As a writer on AEstheticism has observed:—­“When the extravagances attending the movement have been purged away, there may be still left an educating influence, which will impress the lofty and undying principles of Art upon the minds of the people.”

For a time, in-spite of ridicule, this so-called AEstheticism was the vogue, and considerably affected the design and decoration of furniture of the time.  Woodwork was painted olive green; the panels of cabinets, painted in sombre colors, had pictures of sad-looking maidens, and there was an attempt at a “dim religious” effect in our rooms quite inappropriate to such a climate as that of England.  The reaction, however, from the garish and ill-considered colourings of a previous decade or two has left behind it much good, and with the catholicity of taste which marks the furnishing of the present day, people see some merit in every style, and are endeavouring to select that which is desirable without running to the extreme of eccentricity.