to
emphasize a long, low room by horizontal lines, or to accentuate a lofty
one by verticals.

[Illustration (f122): Diagram to Show (1) How the Apparent Depth of a
Space Is Increased by the Use of Vertical Lines, and (2) How the
Apparent Width Is Increased by the Use of Horizontal Lines.]

By the judicious use of line and scale in design, the designer holds a
certain power of transformation in his hands, not to speak of the
transforming effect of colour of different keys and tones, the apparent
contraction or expansion of surfaces by patterns of different character
and scale.

It would obviously not do to regard any wall merely as so much expanse
of surface available for sketching unrelated groups and figures upon, as
they might be jotted down in a sketch-book, and to offer it as
decoration. In an interior thus treated, we should lose all sense of
repose, dignity, and proportion.

Use and custom, which fix and determine so many things in social life
without written laws, have also prescribed certain divisions of the
wall, which, in regard to the exigencies of life and habit and modern
conditions generally, seem natural enough.

[The Skirting]

The lower parts of the walls of most modern dwellings being generally
occupied by furniture placed against them, and liable to be soiled or
injured, it would be out of place to put important and elaborate
ornament or figure designs extending to the skirting. The wooden
skirting, of about nine inches or a foot in depth, which is placed along
the foot of the wall in our modern rooms, is the armour-plating to
protect the plaster, which otherwise might be chipped and litter the
floor. It is perhaps the last relic of the more substantial and
extensive wood panelling and wainscotting which, up to the latter part
of the last century, covered the lower walls of the more comfortable
houses, and has been revived in our own day. The decorator may use
panelling, or wainscotting, or a simple chair-rail above plain painting,
wall-paper, dado, or stencilling, or a dado of matting, as methods of
covering, and at the same time decorating, the lower walls of rooms.

The use of the dado of a darker colour and of wainscot is, no doubt, due
to considerations of wear and tear, and so, like the origin of much
ornamental art, may be traced to actual use and constructive necessity.
When the wood-work of a room--the doors and window frame