If the walls were less rich, this single flood of light would be a defect, because it would be difficult to treat a plain surface with colour alone, which should be equally good in strong light and deep shadow.
[Illustration: DINING-ROOM IN NEW YORK HOME SHOWING CARVED WAINSCOTTING AND PAINTED FRIEZE] Then, again, the amount of living and brilliant colour is exactly proportioned to that of sombre brown, the red holding its value by strength, as against the greatly preponderating mass of dark.

On the whole this may be called a "picture-room," and yet it is distinctly liveable, lending itself not only to hospitality and ceremonious function but also to real domesticity.

It is true that there is a certain obligation in its style of beauty which calls for fine manners and fine behaviour, possibly even, behaviour in kind; for it is in the nature of all fine and exceptional things to demand a corresponding fineness from those who enjoy them.
I will give still another dining-room as an example of colour, which, unlike the others, is not modern, but a sort of falling in of old gentility and costliness into lines of modern art--one might almost say it _happened_ to be beautiful, and yet the happening is only an adjustment of fine old conditions to modern ideas.

Yet I have known many as fine a room torn out and refitted, losing thereby all the inherent dignity of age and superior associations.
A beautiful city home of seventy years ago is not very like a beautiful city home of to-day; perhaps less so in this than in any other country.
The character of its fineness is curiously changed; the modern house is fitted to its inmates, while the old-fashioned house, modelled upon the early eighteenth century art of England, obliged the inmates to fit themselves as best they might to a given standard.
The dining-room I speak of belongs to the period when Washington Square, New York, was still surrounded by noble homes, and almost the limit of luxurious city life was Union Square.

The house fronts to the north, consequently the dining-room, which is at the back, is flooded with sunshine.