e always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say
that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people
will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent
three times the money on new furniture."

In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my
acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such
beautiful rooms,--so charmingly furnished,--you must go and see them.
What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other
house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the
folk,--for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and
never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain
rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that
certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not
why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often,
"How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family.
Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of
very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had
all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only
plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the
compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its
own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A
good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue,
though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is
not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort
gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any
of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten
dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The
lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a
whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very
humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and
Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto
Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original.
Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its
eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in
embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art!

There was one advantage which John and his wife foun