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'4            The Decoration of Houses
people will admit the necessity of harmonizing the colors in a
room, because a feeling for color is more general than a feeling
for form; but in reality the latter is the more important in decora-
tion, and it is the feeling for form, and not any arch~eological
affectation, which makes the best decorators insist upon the ne-
cessity of keeping to the same style of furniture and decoration.
Thus the massive dimensions and heavy panelling of a seven-
teenth-century room would dwarf a set of eighteenth-century
furniture; and the wavy, capricious movement of Louis XV dec-
oration would make the austere yet delicate lines of Adam furni-
ture look stiff and mean.
 Many persons object not only to any attempt at uniformity of
style, but to the use of any recognized style in the decoration of a
room.  They characterize it, according to their individual views,
as "servile," "formal," or "pretentious."
 It has already, been suggested that to conform within rational
limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or
to write according to the rules of grammar.  As to the accusations
of formality and pretentiousness (which are more often made in
America than elsewhere), they may probably be explained by the
fact that most Americans necessarily form their idea of the great
European styles from public buildings and palaces.   Certainly, if
an architect were to propose to his client to decorate a room in a
moderate-sized house in the Louis XIV style, and if the client had
formed his idea of that style from the state apartments in the
palace at Versailles, he would be justified in rejecting the pro-
posed treatment as absolutely unsuitable to modern private life;
whereas the architect who had gone somewhat more deeply into
the subject might have singled out the style as eminently suita-
ble, having in mind one of the simple panelled rooms, with tall