Much as I dislike gas, it is a necessity in any hall, and I here produce two sketches of beaten iron gas-lamps that would be suitable for almost any style of decoration; these are from the designs of Messrs. Strode, 48 Osnaburgh Street, Regent’s Park, and cost respectively 5_l._ 15_s._ and 1_l._ 4_s._ each; quite simple hanging lamps are to be had from Mr. Smee at 35_s._, in beaten iron, but these are not quite large enough by themselves to light a hall, and two at least would be required. [Illustration: FIG. 3.] [Illustration: FIG. 4.] On no account, by the way, allow your front door to be disfigured with the terrible ‘graining,’ against which I am always waging war. Painters always beg to be allowed to ‘embellish’ at least the front door with the hideous but orthodox arrangement of yellows and browns, scraped mysteriously and agonisedly with a comb, or some such instrument, in a faint and feeble attempt to deceive callers into believing that the door is made of some highly polished wood, veined by nature, in a way that could not deceive the veriest ignoramus; but I stoutly set my face against such an idea, and denounce graining as the hideous and palpable sham it undoubtedly is, advising all who come to me to have some good deep self-colour for their front door, and generally suggesting a very dark peacock-blue door for a ‘blue blossom’ hall, a very dark Indian red for the red berry, and a dark sage-green for the sage-green hall, adding brass handles and furniture; this stamps the house at once as an artistic one, and one in which ‘graining’ will not be allowed at any price. And here I will pause for a moment to beg any one who may need these words of mine to refuse to allow any graining whatever in their houses; it is a barbarism that should be allowed to die out as quickly as may be; it is always ugly, always inartistic, and, being an undoubted attempt to seem what it is not, I set my face against it always. I would rather have deal, rubbed over with boiled oil, than the most ‘artistically’ imitated piece of walnut or mahogany ever produced by the grainer’s tools; the one is neat, the other a vulgar sham--vulgar because it is always vulgar to seem to be what one is not, and to pretend to be what can be contradicted by the tiniest scratch, rather than to be confessedly of a cheap material, and therefore graining cannot be too strongly condemned.