Although it may not be so pure in taste, the style of the Renaissance is eminently adapted for comfortable household service. The delicate arabesques and grotesques followed from Raffaelle's adornments of the Vatican are not too precious for use in household decoration--where painting cannot be expected to last as long as pictures framed and out of reach of daily handling--and yet they are graceful enough to refresh without exciting a tired mind. Any one possessing artistic taste and some training can work out these fanciful decorations for home gratification, and being cherished, they will last three or four times as long as the graining of the house-painter. Besides, and this is a great consideration in cities, all the majolica ornaments and tiles, which are so suitable to this style of decoration, will wash, and be bright and clear for ever. Do not despise the Renaissance, for there is much delight in it, though not of the highest kind. We may keep the higher things for higher uses. A Brussels carpet of Persian pattern is very nice for a drawing-room, as it is unobtrusive, and yet it is cheerful, and suits most styles of furniture. This, like the dining-room carpet, had better be made with a border, and so as to allow of a margin of the floor round it being varnished. If edged with fringe its appearance is enriched; and I do not in practice find the fringe inconveniently displaced by ladies' dresses, nor in dusting, as I feared it might be when I added it to a carpet which required enlarging. The remarks on dining-room curtains and rods apply equally here, as it is of great consequence that the room should be easily cleaned. For a young couple beginning to furnish, it may be well to have some of the pretty _cretonnes_ for curtains and chair-coverings, which would last clean and bright while better were being worked on simple materials from patterns, either original or borrowed from the Art Needlework Society. Then the _cretonne_ curtains might be hung in the newly furnished spare bed-room. The chair-coverings would be replaced one by one as others were worked or nice materials met with. In doing fancy-work, it is better to make one good thing large enough to take a pride in, than countless little elegances, such as mats, antimacassars, table banner-screens, etc., which seldom last long, and are terribly in the way. The time consumed in making pincushions, pocket-tidies, and tiny knick-knacks, would serve to tapestry a room, let alone making curtains for it.