The same design is carried in silvery and gold-coloured leaded-glass across the top of the wide west window, as shown in illustration opposite page 222, and reappears with a shield-shaped arrangement of wings in a beautiful four-leaved screen.
The notable and enjoyable colour of the room is seen from the very entrance of the house, the broad main hall making a carpeted highway to the wide opening of the room, where a sheaf of tinted sunset light seems to spread itself like a many-doubled fan against the shadows of the hall.
All the ranges and intervals, the lights, reflections, and darks possible to that most beautiful of metals--copper--seem to be gathered into the frieze and screen, and melt softly into the greens of the foliage, or tint the plumage of the swans.

It is an instance of the kind of decoration which is both classic and domestic, and being warmed and vivified by beautiful colour, appeals both to the senses and the imagination.
It would be easy to multiply instances of beautiful rooms, and each one might be helpful for mere imitation, but those I have given have each one illustrated--more or less distinctly--the principle of colour as affecting or being affected by light.
I have not thought it necessary to give examples of rooms with eastern or western exposures, because in such rooms one is free to consult one's own personal preferences as to colour, being limited only by the general rules which govern all colour decoration.
I have not spoken of pictures or paintings as accessories of interior decoration, because while their influence upon the character and degree of beauty in the house is greater than all other things put together, their selection and use are so purely personal as not to call for remark or advice.

Any one who loves pictures well enough to buy them, can hardly help placing them where they not only are at their best, but where they will also have the greatest influence.
A house where pictures predominate will need little else that comes under the head of decoration.

It is a pity that few houses have this advantage, but fortunately it is quite possible to give a picture quality to every interior.

This can often be done by following the lead of some accidental effect which is in itself picturesque.