456

DRAWING-ROOM OF A HOUSE AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK

457

DRAWING-ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF THE LATE MR. AUGUST BELMONT, NOW THE RESIDENCE OF MR. PERRY BELMONT, NEWPORT, R. I.

cafè au lait in reality. A blue braid binds these, and blue appears again on the sofa cushions, on table mats and in the tapestry. Thus blue and gold, which makes everywhere a charming combination, appears here, but so softened, so kindly chosen, that one gets all the sentiments of the past, even where a modern stuff, like that of the portière, has been introduced over the carved oak door. Some splendid effects are produced in these days by the use in salons of marble or wooden columns introduced about the doorways. One sees them in many of the important salons giving distinction to entrances. Even when they make no architectural pretence of supporting a framework, they are, when low enough, often placed on either side of a portal, and made to hold large church candlesticks or other important pieces having artistic value. Tapestries and velvets, satins and silks of the richest de

scription are employed as hangings, superb old stuffs to supply which some church or palace has been denuded. Marbles appear in the construction, some that were carved centuries ago, and woods that have taken as many years to tone; ceilings that were once the boast of ancestral homes, and chairs in which kings have sat, thus repeating the history of all revivals in which a love of the artistic prevailed, and when Greece was robbed to furnish Italy, and Italy

to embellish France. And these salons with their splendors are found everywhere, distributed throughout the country in unexpected places, forming centres of interest which in a generation to come may be still more widely felt, and perhaps lead to the development of an original art among us. Great dependence indeed has been placed upon these accessories, and not so much upon the creation of rooms which would

stand more or less by themselves as when wood is used exclusively, and the architect has created an interior in which decoration is not so much an accessory as an integral part of the construction.

Of these, happily, we have many interesting examples. Thus there are salons of French walnut with panelled ceilings, the boiserie framing panels with exquisitely rounded arches. The hangings are in red or low in tone. Into rooms like these, one can rightly introduce only the very chaste and exquisite, appliqués which are as ob

servant of beauty of line, tables that suggest a respect for proportions and the material of which they are made. Even the flowers must be carefully chosen, and the vases that hold them, must be beautiful in themselves. And the temptation to dwell upon the consideration paid to these details is almost irresistible, so altogether delightful is the impression made by them, so compelling to one's admiration of the man woman who has had the courage to respect only the finer necessities and conventions.

or

HE section of Eng

land known as the

Lake District occupies portions of the northern counties of Cumberland, Lancaster and Westmoreland, extending over an area the greatest length and breadth of which is not more than thirty-five miles. Lowell happily labelled the entire region "Wordsworthshire." It is perhaps the most compact tourist resort of all Europe, and its picturesque attractions of rugged mountains, verdant valleys, spreading lakes and luxuriant woods, together with its charming literary associations, are unequalled in England and unsurpassed elsewhere. Here are found. interesting memorials of Wordsworth (1770-1850), Wilson ("Christopher North"), Southey, Shelley, Ruskin, Mrs. Hemans, Hawthorne, De Quincey, Coleridge and his two sons, with some others

On ame's eternal beadroll worthie to be fyled.

Here also may be seen the graves of Hartley Coleridge, John Ruskin, Robert Southey and William Wordsworth. It is to the master of Rydal Mount, the greatest of the Lake poets and possibly the most profound as well as sublime of modern English poets, whose footsteps I lovingly followed for a memorable fortnight, that this paper is devoted.

No imaginative writer within the range of American and English literature is so identified with locality as Wordsworth, and there is not one among poets the appreciation of whose writings is more aided by an intimate. knowledge of the district in which he lived. It is indispensable to all who would know the peculiar charm of a region which may well be called Wordworthshire, and where it was estimated by De Quincey the poet had walked one hundred and eighty

thousand miles! In Wordsworth's own

words, it may fairly be characterized as "a national property," of which he beyond all poets effected the literary conveyance to posterity. Of the Lake district he writes: "I do not know any tract of country in which,