and
manufactured art, the furnishing of a house is truly "the beginning of
wisdom." One learns to appreciate what is excellent in the new, from
study and appreciation of quality in the old.

It is the fascination of this study which has made a multiplication of
shops and collections of "antiques" in every quarter of the city. Many a
woman begins from the shop-keeper's point of view of the value of mere
age, and learns by experience that age, considered by itself, is a
disqualification, and that it gives value only when the art which
created the antique has been lost or greatly deteriorated. If one can
find as good, or a better thing in art and quality, made to-day--by all
means buy the thing of to-day, and let yourself and your children be
credited with the hundred or two years of wear which is in it. We can
easily see that it is wiser to buy modern iridescent glass, fitted to
our use, and yet carrying all the fascinating lustre of ancient glass,
than to sigh for the possession of some unbuyable thing belonging to
dead and gone Caesars. And the case is as true of other modern art and
modern inventions, if the art is good, and the inventions suitable to
our wants and needs.

Yet in spite of the goodness of much that is new, there is a subtle
pleasure in turning over, and even in appropriating, the things that are
old. There are certain fenced-in-blocks on the east side of New York
City where for many years the choice parts of old houses have been
deposited. As fashion and wealth have changed their locality--treading
slowly up from the Battery to Central Park--many beautiful bits of
construction have been left behind in the abandoned houses--either
disregarded on account of change in popular taste, or unappreciated by
reason of want of knowledge. For the few whose knowledge was competent,
there were things to be found in the second-hand yards, precious beyond
comparison with anything of contemporaneous manufacture.

There were panelled front doors with beautifully fluted columns and
carved capitals, surmounted by half-ovals of curiously designed sashes;
there were beautifully wrought iron railings, and elaborate newel-posts
of mahogany, brass door-knobs and hinges, and English hob-grates, and
crystal chandeliers of cost and brilliance, and panelled wainscots of
oak and mahogany; chimney-pieces in marble and wood of an excellence
which we are almost vainly trying to compass, and all of them to be
bought at the price of