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 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-manufacture. 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: we 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
      tints of crimson and gold—appear everywhere in profusion, and
      determine the _character _of the room.