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

great British plates, and then imagine we have done a fine thing. Now the
slightest thought will be sufficient to convince any one who has an eye at
all, of the ill effect of numerous looking-glasses, and especially of
large ones. Regarded apart from its reflection, the mirror presents a
continuous, flat, colourless, unrelieved surface, - a thing always and
obviously unpleasant. Considered as a reflector, it is potent in producing
a monstrous and odious uniformity: and the evil is here aggravated, not in
merely direct proportion with the augmentation of its sources, but in a
ratio constantly increasing. In fact, a room with four or five mirrors
arranged at random, is, for all purposes of artistic show, a room of no
shape at all. If we add to this evil, the attendant glitter upon glitter,
we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing effects. The
veriest bumpkin, on entering an apartment so bedizzened, would be
instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be altogether unable
to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let the same person be led
into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be startled into an
exclamation of pleasure and surprise.

It is an evil growing out of our republican institutions, that here a
man of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in it.
The corruption of taste is a portion or a pendant of the dollar-manufac
sure. As we grow rich, our ideas grow rusty. It is, therefore, not among
_our _aristocracy that we must look (if at all, in Appallachia), for the
spirituality of a British _boudoir. _But we have seen apartments in the
tenure of Americans of moderns [possibly "modest" or "moderate"] means,
which, in negative merit at least, might vie with any of the _or-molu'd
_cabinets of our friends across the water. Even _now_, there is present to
our mind's eye a small and not, ostentatious chamber with whose
decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor lies asleep on a sofa -
the weather is cool - the time is near midnight: arc will make a sketch of
the room during his slumber.

It is oblong - some thirty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth -
a shape affording the best(ordinary) opportunities for the adjustment of
furniture. It has but one door - by no means a wide one - which is at one
end of the parallelogram, and but two windows, which are at the other.
These latter are large, reaching down to the floor - have deep recesses -
and open on an Italian _veranda. _Their panes are of a crimson-tinted
glass, set in rose-wood framings, more massive than usual. They are
curtained within the recess, by a thick silver tissue adapted to the shape
of the window, and hanging loosely in small volumes. Without the recess
are curtains of an exceedingly rich crimson silk, fringed with a deep
network of gold, and lined with silver tissue, which is the material of
the exterior blind. There are no cornices; but the folds of the whole
fabric (which are sharp rather than massive, and have an airy appearance),
issue from beneath a broad entablature of rich giltwork, which encircles
the room at the junction of the ceiling and walls. The drapery is thrown
open also, or closed, by means of a thick rope of gold loosely enveloping
it, and resolving itself readily into a knot; no pins or other such
devices are apparent. The colours of the curtains and their fringe - the