, and may in the future distinguish this art-loving period as a
maker of style.

A successful foreign painter who has visited this country at intervals
during the last ten years said, "There is no such uniformity of
beautiful interiors anywhere else in the world. There are palaces in
France and Italy, and great country houses in England, to the
embellishment of which generations of owners have devoted the best art
of their own time; but in America there is something of it everywhere.
Many unpretentious houses have drawing-rooms possessing
colour-decoration which would distinguish them as examples in England or
France."

To Americans this does not seem a remarkable fact. We have come into a
period which desires beauty, and each one secures it as best he can. We
are a teachable and a studious people, with a faculty of turning
"general information" to account; and general information upon art
matters has had much to do with our good interiors.

We have, perhaps half unconsciously, applied fundamental principles to
our decoration, and this may be as much owing to natural good sense as
to cultivation. We have a habit of reasoning about things, and acting
upon our conclusions, instead of allowing the rest of the world to do
the reasoning while we adopt the result. It is owing to this conjunction
of love for and cultivation of art, and the habit of materializing what
we wish, that we have so many thoroughly successful interiors, which
have been accomplished almost without aid from professional artists. It
is these, instead of the smaller number of costly interiors, which give
the reputation of artistic merit to our homes.

Undoubtedly the largest proportion of successful as well as
unsuccessful domestic art in our country is due to the efforts of women.
In the great race for wealth which characterizes our time, it is
demanded that women shall make it effective by so using it as to
distinguish the family; and nothing distinguishes it so much as the
superiority of the home. This effort adheres to small as well as large
fortunes, and in fact the necessity is more pronounced in the case of
mediocre than of great ones. In the former there is something to be made
up--some protest of worth and ability and intelligence that helps many a
home to become beautiful.

As I have said, a woman feels that the test of her capacity is that her
house shall not only be comfortable and attractive, but that it shall be
arranged according to t