These are the classics of design and hold the same relation to ornament printed on paper and silk that we find in the music of the Psalms, as compared with the tinkle of the ballad.

There are other methods of decoration in oils which will meet the wants of the many who like to exercise their own artistic feelings and ability in their houses or rooms.  The painting of flower-friezes upon canvas which can afterward be mounted upon the wall is a never-ending source of pleasure; and many of these friezes have a charm and intimacy which no merely professional painter can rival.  These are especially suitable for bedrooms, since there they may be as personal as the inmate pleases without undue unveiling of thoughts, fancies, or personal experiences to the public.  A favourite flower or a favourite motto or selection may be the motive of a charming decoration, if the artist has sufficient art-knowledge to subordinate it to its architectural juxtaposition.  A narrow border of fixed repeating forms like a rug-border will often fulfil the necessity for architectural lines, and confine the flower-border into limits which justify its freedom of composition.

If one wishes to mount a favourite motto or quotation on the walls, where it may give constant suggestion or pleasure—­or even be a help to thoughtful and conscientious living—­there can be no better fashion than the style of the old illuminated missals.  Dining-rooms and chimney-pieces are often very appropriately decorated in this way; the words running on scrolls which are half unrolled and half hidden, and showing a conventionalised background of fruit and flowers.

In all these things the knowingness, which is the result of study, tells very strongly—­and it is quite worth while to give a good deal of study to the subject of this kind of decoration before expending the requisite amount of work upon a painted frieze.

Canvas friezes have the excellent merit of being not only durable and cleanable, but they belong to the category of pictures; to what Ruskin calls “portable art,” and one need not grudge the devotion of considerable time, study, and effort to their doing, since they are really detachable property, and can be removed from one house or room and carried to another at the owner’s or artist’s will.

There is room for the exercise of much artistic ability in this direction, as the fact of being able to paint the decoration in parts and afterward place it, makes it possible for an amateur to do much for the enhancement of her own house.

More than any other room in the house, the bedroom will show personal character.  Even when it is not planned for particular occupation, the characteristics of the inmate will write themselves unmistakably in the room.  If the college boy is put in the white and gold bedroom for even a vacation period, there will shortly come into its atmosphere an element of sporting and out-of-door life.  Banners and balls and bats, and emblems of the “wild thyme” order will colour its whiteness; and life of the growing kind make itself felt in the midst of sanctity.  In the same way, girls would change the bare asceticism of a monk’s cell into a bower of lilies and roses; a fit place for youth and unpraying innocence.