Throughout this beautiful house there are little arrangements for convenience, always attended by beauty, which are altogether indescribable--a head or a sprig of ivy painted in some panel, or a little gauze curtain draping a casual opening. But I must particularly note in the drawing-room a beautiful capping to the dado. It is a white moulding of the Elgin marble reliefs, and most beautifully fringes the dark-figured stuff of the dado. I have already described the fine drapery of this room. I need only now say that Mr. Alma Tadema has designed some candelabra which appear to me most beautiful. The reader will, I fear, be but little able to obtain from one of the drawings an idea of the rich minglings of the bronze with the rose porcelain egg-shaped centre-piece, and the figures painted upon it. Both of the candelabra which I have selected as specimens are for rose-colored candles. In the houses of many artists ancient oratory (suspended) candelabra are used for the centres of rooms, and also brass repoussé sconces bracketed with bevelled mirrors. The English upper classes have never been reconciled to the use of gasaliers in their drawing-rooms, and the artists have pretty generally opposed the use of gas, which is believed to be damaging to oil-pictures.
In concluding this account of the most interesting examples of decorative art with which I am acquainted in England, I add, in preference to any general observations of my own, a few extracts from very high authorities, affirming principles whose truth seems to me to be illustrated by every exterior, and interior to which I have referred. The first of these quotations is the placarded principles of decorative art hung up in the school at South Kensington:
1. The decorative arts arise from, and should properly be attendant upon, architecture. 2. Architecture should be the material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the sentiments of the age in which it is created. 3. Style in architecture is the peculiar form that expression takes under the influence of climate and the materials at command.
METAL-WORKS, POTTERY, AND PLASTIC FORMS GENERALLY.--1. The form should be most carefully adapted to use, being studied for elegance and beauty of line as well as for capacity, strength, mobility, etc. 2. In ornamenting the construction care should be taken to preserve the general form, and to keep the decoration subservient to it by the low relief or otherwise; the ornament should be so arranged as to enhance by its lines the symmetry of the original form, and assist its constructive strength. 3. If arabesques or figures in the round are used, they should arise out of the ornamental and constructive forms, and not be merely applied. 4. All projecting parts should have careful consideration, to render them as little liable to injury as is consistent with their purpose. 5. It must ever be remembered that repose is required to give value to ornament, which in itself is secondary and not principal.