I do most seriously advise you to get rid of all this, or as much of it as you can without absolute ruin to your prospects in life; and even if you do not know how to decorate it, at least have a hole in the wall of a convenient shape, faced with such bricks or tiles as will at once bear fire and clean; then some sort of iron basket in it, and out from that a real hearth of cleanable brick or tile, which will not make you blush when you look at it, and as little in the way of guard and fender as you think will be safe; that will do to begin with.  For the rest, if you have wooden work about the fireplace, which is often good to have, don’t mix up the wood and the tiles together; let the wood-work look like part of the wall-covering, and the tiles like part of the chimney.

As for movable furniture, even if time did not fail us, ’tis a large subject—­or a very small one—­so I will but say, don’t have too much of it; have none for mere finery’s sake, or to satisfy the claims of custom—­these are flat truisms, are they not?  But really it seems as if some people had never thought of them, for ’tis almost the universal custom to stuff up some rooms so that you can scarcely move in them, and to leave others deadly bare; whereas all rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have, so to say, a friendly welcome ready for the incomer.

A dining-room ought not to look as if one went into it as one goes into a dentist’s parlour—­for an operation, and came out of it when the operation was over—­the tooth out, or the dinner in.  A drawing-room ought to look as if some kind of work could be done in it less toilsome than being bored.  A library certainly ought to have books in it, not boots only, as in Thackeray’s country snob’s house, but so ought each and every room in the house more or less; also, though all rooms should look tidy, and even very tidy, they ought not to look too tidy.

Furthermore, no room of the richest man should look grand enough to make a simple man shrink in it, or luxurious enough to make a thoughtful man feel ashamed in it; it will not do so if Art be at home there, for she has no foes so deadly as insolence and waste.  Indeed, I fear that at present the decoration of rich men’s houses is mostly wrought out at the bidding of grandeur and luxury, and that art has been mostly cowed or shamed out of them; nor when I come to think of it will I lament it overmuch.  Art was not born in the palace; rather she fell sick there, and it will take more bracing air than that of rich men’s houses to heal her again.  If she is ever to be strong enough to help mankind once more, she must gather strength in simple places; the refuge from wind and weather to which the goodman comes home from field or hill-side; the well-tidied space into which the craftsman draws from the litter of loom, and smithy, and bench; the scholar’s island in the sea of books; the artist’s clearing in the canvas-grove; it is from these places that Art must come if she