Both Mr. Loftie's "Plea for Art in the House" and the Misses Garrett's advice on "House Decoration"[13] belong to the best kind of works on the very important subject of cultivating good taste in the furniture of the home. They are very direct and clear, and their authors are entirely competent to instruct us all on this subject. Especially are they free from what we consider to be the worst fault a book of this kind can show, an obtrusive pretension to superior taste. It is a great mistake to suppose that we can elevate people by showing them that we consider ourselves far above them in taste and judgment; but this mistake is not unfrequently made. That may be the fact, but if there is no evidence of it but a patronizing treatment of others, there is little hope that much good will be done. Both these books are free from that error, and Mr. Loftie especially takes his readers into a survey of a good many branches of decorative art, exhibiting a familiar acquaintance with them all, talking alternately of the blunders and successes of collectors, real and would-be, and all with a natural enthusiasm and freedom from superciliousness. The Garrett sisters also give a great number of valuable suggestions and some very taking illustrations of tasteful decoration. We wish they had given less of their work to criticism of the conventional London house and more to the description of what is good. So far as we are acquainted with books of this class, they abound in two faults, discursiveness and inordinate discussion of bad models. Artistic house decoration is a technical art, and must be taught like all other arts--by the exhibition of good precedents. Strictly speaking, there can be no theories in matters of taste. All the so-called laws or canons of taste are obtained by observing what has been well done. From that we may learn what is well doing, and the educated taste produces good work. There is nothing in art so implicit as the surveyor's dependence upon the law of magnetic attraction. The notes of a survey well made to-day can be given to a surveyor a century hence, and he will bring the lines out to within half an inch, and put his hand upon each boundary mark that has been made. But it is not so in art. In all the reconstructions of ancient Grecian buildings not one has been rebuilt. Neither the Madeleine nor the Valhalla repeat the art of the Parthenon, however faithfully they repeat its form and measurements. Good taste is a thing that no French surveyor can secure with any refinement whatever of the metric system. But still there is a soil in which this plant can be grown, and that soil is the collective evidences of good taste in the past. Let us have a book so full of good illustrations that didactic instruction shall not be needed. [13] "_A Plea for Art in the House._" By W. J. LOFTIE, F. S. A. Porter & Coates, Philadelphia. (Art at Home Series.)