Collected Works of Poe | Page 2

proper adjustment, depending upon the character of the general effect.
Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we still very frequently err in their patterns and colours. The soul of the apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet _must be _a genius. Yet we have heard discoursing of carpets, with the air "_d'un mouton qui reve," _fellows who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own _moustaches. _Every one knows that a large floor _may _have a covering of large figures, and that a small one must have a covering of small - yet this is not all the knowledge in the world. As regards texture, the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying agonies. Touching pattern - a carpet 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 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