Do not hang your dining-room pictures very high; few of us tower above six feet, and it is easier for those who do so to stoop, than for the rest of us to stand on tip-toe; we must consider the convenience of the majority. Money is well expended on picture-frames, as when they are handsome and chosen with taste, they enhance our enjoyment of the pictures. But a costly frame is not always a good one, and when gilt composition runs riot in ferns and fantastic flames, as we frequently see it do around mirrors, its effect is barbaric, rather than elegant. Broad flats in gilt plaster are less excellent than gold laid on the wood itself. For prints, where economy has to be much considered, few frames are better than those of flat oak with a bevelled edge, and on the flat a slight design of graceful lines made with the parting-tool, and only the lines gilt. Pictures, if small and numerous, should not be dotted about the walls, but grouped. One sometimes see walls as spotted as a currant-dumpling. A band of wood, called a grazing line, behind the chair-backs protects the wall, and is an aid to picture hanging, by giving a line from which we may measure their bases. If there are many large pictures, they should be hung from a rod placed near the ceiling, or a foot lower, if an ornamental band of paper is carried round the top of the room below the cornice. If the cornice is not already "picked out," as the decorators term it, in colour--that is, delicately tinted in distemper--it should be done, as it is a great improvement. It is not difficult to do this for one's self. The necessary materials are a pennyworth of whitening, a pennyworth of size, and of the required tints a pennyworth. Break up some whitening into saucers, mix it with water until it is of the consistence of thick cream, add a tablespoonful of melted size to each saucer, shake in about a teaspoonful of powdered colour to each, and apply with a badger or hog-hair paintbrush. Strong colours become pale tints when mixed with the whitening, and the mixture dries paler than it is applied. To paint the ground on which the plaster design is embossed gives a cameo effect and is elegant, but sometimes it is better to colour the raised ornaments. Taste must be the guide here. This quantity of material is sufficient to tint every cornice in the house. Splashes of the colour are easily wiped off while the mixture is wet. Where the family is small, an oval table, like we generally see in France, is the most convenient form; as the master and mistress sit facing each other at the narrowest part of the oval, where they can communicate freely with each other, and more easily dispense the general hospitality. A table of this shape is lengthened by leaves inserted in the central division; when quite closed it is a round table. A dumb-waiter placed at the right hand of the mistress enables much personal waiting to be dispensed with.