mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our streets, the falsity of our
ornamentation, the vulgarity of our upholstery, have not something to do
with those bad tempers which breed false conclusions?

On several grounds it is possible to make a more speedy and extensive
application of artistic reform to our interior decoration than to our
external architecture. One of these grounds is that most of our ugly
buildings must stand; we cannot afford to pull them down. But every year
we are decorating interiors afresh, and people of modest means may
benefit by the introduction of beautiful designs into stucco ornaments,
paper-hangings, draperies, and carpets. Fine taste in the decoration of
interiors is a benefit that spreads from the palace to the clerk's house
with one parlor.

All honor, then, to the architect who has zealously vindicated the claim
of internal ornamentation to be a part of the architect's function, and
has labored to rescue that form of art which is most closely connected
with the sanctities and pleasures of our hearths from the hands of
uncultured tradesmen. All the nation ought at present to know that this
effort is peculiarly associated with the name of Mr. Owen Jones; and
those who are most disposed to dispute with the architect about his
coloring must at least recognize the high artistic principle which has
directed his attention to colored ornamentation as a proper branch of
architecture. One monument of his effort in this way is his "Grammar of
Ornament," of which a new and cheaper edition has just been issued. The
one point in which it differs from the original and more expensive
edition, viz., the reduction in the size of the pages (the amount of
matter and number of plates are unaltered), is really an advantage; it is
now a very manageable folio, and when the reader is in a lounging mood
may be held easily on the knees. It is a magnificent book; and those who
know no more of it than the title should be told that they will find in
it a pictorial history of ornamental design, from its rudimentary
condition as seen in the productions of savage tribes, through all the
other great types of art--the Egyptian, Assyrian, ancient Persian, Greek,
Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Moresque, Mohammedan-Persian, Indian, Celtic,
Mediaeval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Italian. The letter-press
consists, first, of an introductory statement of fundamental principles
of ornamentation--principles, says the auth