"Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 of 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

should _not _be bedizzened out like a Riccaree Indian - all red chalk,
yellow ochre, and cock's feathers. In brief - distinct grounds, and vivid
circular or cycloid figures, _of no meaning, _are here Median laws. The
abomination of flowers, or representations of well-known objects of any
kind, should not be endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed,
whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all
upholstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque. As for those
antique floor-cloth & still occasionally seen in the dwellings of the
rabble - cloths of huge, sprawling, and radiating devises,
stripe-interspersed, and glorious with all hues, among which no ground is
intelligible-these are but the wicked invention of a race of time-servers
and money-lovers - children of Baal and worshippers of Mammon - Benthams,
who, to spare thought and economize fancy, first cruelly invented the
Kaleidoscope, and then established joint-stock companies to twirl it by
steam.

_ Glare is _a leading error in the philosophy of American household
decoration - an error easily recognised as deduced from the perversion of
taste just specified., We are violently enamoured of gas and of glass. The
former is totally inadmissible within doors. Its harsh and unsteady light
offends. No one having both brains and eyes will use it. A mild, or what
artists term a cool light, with its consequent warm shadows, will do
wonders for even an ill-furnished apartment. Never was a more lovely
thought than that of the astral lamp. We mean, of course, the astral lamp
proper - the lamp of Argand, with its original plain ground-glass shade,
and its tempered and uniform moonlight rays. The cut-glass shade is a weak
invention of the enemy. The eagerness with which we have adopted it,
partly on account of its _flashiness, _but principally on account of its
_greater rest, is _a good commentary on the proposition with which we
began. It is not too much to say, that the deliberate employer of a
cut-glass shade, is either radically deficient in taste, or blindly
subservient to the caprices of fashion. The light proceeding from one of
these gaudy abominations is unequal broken, and painful. It alone is
sufficient to mar a world of good effect in the furniture subjected to its
influence. Female loveliness, in especial, is more than one-half
disenchanted beneath its evil eye.

In the matter of glass, generally, we proceed upon false principles.
Its leading feature is _glitter - _and in that one word how much of all
that is detestable do we express ! Flickering, unquiet lights, are
_sometimes _pleasing - to children and idiots always so - but in the
embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth,
even strong _steady _lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning glass
chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle in
our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of
all that is false in taste or preposterous in folly.

The rage for _glitter-_because its idea has become as we before
observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract-has led us,
also, to the exaggerated employment of mirrors. We line our dwellings with