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1!2      Original Papers: Decoration and Furnishing of Dwellings. 
the public, and from what we hear, the greatest care has been taken to recog
nise to the fullest the popular voice in them. 
Numerous gratifying testimonies to the value of this proposal are daily 
appearing. No one is more so than the offer of Mr. Lea, of Astley, to give
100 
guineas to any man, or set of men, who may invent a new article of any descrip-
tion, provided it is done in Kidderminster, and adapted for general use.
It is 
a bright example worthy to  be extensively followed by other manufacturers.
HINTS FOR THE DECORATION AND FURNISHING OF DWELLINGS. 
The Dining Room. No. II. 
IN our "last appeal" on the subject of this "momentous question,"
we 
supposed the happy new proprietor of our dining-room to come into possession,
finding the plasterers' work already done. We have defined plasterers' work
as consisting of a centre rosette and a cornice. Now having had occasion
in 
the course of our lives, for some half-dozen years, to watch the construction
of 
about a hundred houses annually of exactly the class we are describing, we
know enough of the "doctrine of probabilities" in such matters
to predicate 
with tolerable certainty the character of this "decoration." We
have constantly 
remarked that the smaller the room, the larger the rosette-the lower the
height of the ceiling, the greater its heaviness and projection-that the
more 
bold and cumbrous the cornice, the fainter and flatter the rosette,-and the
exact converse of all these propositions. Now let us see what can be done
to 
remedy as far as possible a few of these anomalies. Let us suppose a room
8 feet 6 inches or 9 feet high only, 16 by 18 feet square, with a rosette
4 feet 
6 inches in diameter, consisting of a sunflowpr centre, surrounded by eight
great coarse acanthus leaves, with a fine pine-apple between each, the whole
starting forward So much from the surface of the ceiling as to convey the
sensation, every time you sit down to dinner, that the whole is about to
descend for the purpose of forming a magnificent pldt in the midst of your
table. Send at once for a good careful plasterer to take the monstrosity
down 
piece by piece, and pack it up safely, in order that at the expiration of
your 
lease it may be replaced in its primitive ugliness. This being done, you
will 
find at once that your room has gained at least a foot in apparent dimension
every way-in height, in length, and in breadth. Now go at once to either
Messrs. Jackson's of Rathbone Place, or Messrs. Bielefield's of Wellington
Street, 
Strand, and select from their excellent stocks, or pattern-books, some elegant
little centre, pierced and of faint projection. Take it to any paper-hanger
of 
taste, tell him the colour of your walls, and ask him to get it picked out
for 
you in the two tints which form the ground and ornament of your paper. If
you wish your ceiling to look really elegant, ask him to supply you with
a 
wreath executed on paper to surround it, the coloured lines being worked
in 
the same tints as those of the centre flower, but of only half their intensity.
Now, on the other hand, let us suppose that your room is large and lofty,
with 
a little trumpery, wiry centre-flower. Go, under these circumstances, to
either 
of the manufaeturers we have mentioned, and choose a light pendant ornament,
which may be superadded without disturbing the original; let this be picked
out in rather more brilliant colour, and surround the whole with a boldly
printed circular decoration by Simpson, Norwood, or Clarke. If by any chance
your ceiling should be very low indeed, or cottage fashion, disfigured by
a 
girder running across the middle, or the centre of one side not corresponding
with the centre of another, the best plan will be to remove any decoration
which may exist, and to substitute none of your own for it, since it would
be 
worse than waste of time and money to call attention to defects you cannot
remedy. 
In following out these our directions care must, however, be taken that all
after introductions harunonise in style with the original and undisturbed
por- 
tions. How often have we seen angle ornaments, similar to the elegant little