take. Dr. Holland classes all preachers as poetical and nonpoetical, and adds that the non poetical have no right to preach at all.* Expository sermonizing needs poetry as well as accuracy. "The virtue of books is, to be readable," says Mr. Emerson. One virtue of sermons is to be hearable, and when they are so, the people will hear.

As a matter of fact this kind of preaching, where faithfully tried, has secured variety, freshness, and timeliness in the topics of the pulpit, and has proved attractive and edifying to the pews. Dr. W. M. Taylor and Dr. John Hall, who are among the best expositors in this country, never lack for audiences. Prof. Phelps expresses the opinion that his Biblical course "saved his pulpit." These are great preachers; we should, doubtless, lag far behind them; but not farther, perhaps, in this kind of preaching than in every other.

"In exposition, where does the application come in?" inquires a friend. One reply is, All the way through. Let the whole sermon be addressed to the whole man. If truth is made self-evidencing, then as fast as it is uttered, it will find the hearer's heart. The "rational, unadulterated milk " (1 Pet. ii, 2,) is nourishing in every drop, the virtue of it being diffused through the whole and not all condensed in the last swallow. But, while the whole sermon should go home to the consciousness, there may be, with a long text as well as with a short one, a gathering up of all that has been said in a vigorous summary, and a true oratorical conclusion. Indeed, the homiletic habit so clings to the preacher (and rightly) that he can close nothing without an application; and mine, at this time, shall be this: If you believe that expository preaching has the advantages which have been named, and so has claims upon your ministry, then try it!

REV. WILLIAM CRAWFORD.

*Letters to the Joneses.

Society and Solitude, p. 62.

ARTICLE IV.—PRINCIPLES OF DOMESTIC TASTE.

A LECTURE DELIVERED IN THE YALE SCHOOL OF THE FINE ARTS.

BY PROFESSOR EDWARD E. SALISBURY.

THE subject I desire to bring before you is the Principles of Domestic Taste. Will it be objected, in advance, that there is no disputing about tastes-that, for each individual, whatever is to his or her taste is tasteful? and that, especially with respect to domestic arrangements, everyone is a law to himself? But, although I shall have to condemn some things which seem to me to violate good taste, my purpose is, mainly, to give expression to certain principles, which all must agree in recognizing as true and fundamental, as soon as put into words, yet which need to be brought out and emphasized, in order to their becoming more widely influential. Of course, I speak only as an amateur.

The first thing which it occurs to me to say on this subject, is that the idea of home lies at the foundation of all true domestic taste. There was a time, in the history of man, when the most primitive conception of a human habitation, as a place of shelter, was all that guided in the construction and furnishing of the house. We see traces of this in the rude huts, or moving tents, of certain barbarous tribes still existing, though even in the most primitive habitation it is a rare thing not to find some intimations of the sanctities of home, and some sense of beauty. Perhaps what first consecrated the house as a home may have been the religious instinct, bringing to the domestic hearth a reverence for higher powers, and a consequent spirit of self-control; for it is highly probable that the earliest temples of antiquity, set apart for abiding places of the gods, were modeled after human habitations. This could scarcely have been the case before the latter had begun to gather to themselves an atmosphere of sanctity.

No

But what riches of meaning invest the idea of home! place for disguises, nor for mysteries of shame, it is at once sacred to retirement, and appropriate to an open frankness; not given for the indulgence of ignoble indolence, rest and repose

brood over it; no lurking-place for the contrarieties and mean selfishnesses of human nature, wherever its true significance is realized, it subdues into a sweet harmony by the prevalence of divinely inspired love, and becomes a nursery of good cheer; though never to be rudely invaded, yet it invites and welcomes the coming guest; birth-place of the tenderest sympathies of earth, it holds itself in constant communication, by many an electric cord, of reverence, affection, memory and aspiration, with the spiritual world. Such are some of those delights of home from appreciation of which all true domestic taste must have its rise. This leads to the further suggestion, that this department of taste, in common, indeed, with all others associated with art-culture, yet even more than any other, derives its life and impulse from moral sources. I hold it to be absurd to look for taste in a house where love does not reign-moral discord, or impurity, must blight every attempt to realize visible beauty. However fair the seeming, to a superficial observer, whatever richness of detail might be included in a description, the aroma of genuine beauty can not be breathed in an atmosphere morally pestilential, or wanting in healthy vitality. Without moral life and purity, indeed, those sarcastic words of Swift will have their application:

"I find, by all you have been telling,
That 'tis a house, but not a dwelling."

There can be no home!

What, then, in respect to domestic taste, do the essential elements of home require? This question may be answered by saying, in the first place, that, as home is for retirement, nothing about it should be primarily designed to catch the eye of a stranger, but everything as if no strange eye were ever to look in upon it. The style which prevailed, until lately, in our chief middle-state city, under the influence of the followers of Penn, to give great plainness to the exterior of the house, reserving its richness for the interior, seems to me to have been consonant with good taste. In the interminglings of men with one another, appearances are to be regarded. Even in such comparatively trivial matters as dress, or outward

demeanor, something is due to the conventionalities of custom, and to what people have agreed to consider as becoming, or the contrary. But it is not so in one's home. Withdrawn into that sacred privacy, one should ignore the tyranny of fashion, and scorn to make up a show-picture for prying eyes to remark upon and praise. Too often, through oversight of this, what should be a home becomes nothing better than a museum. Not as being primarily for others to see, but by some impulse within one's own bosom, should all the appointments of one's home be determined. I would not be supposed to claim for the home any privilege of selfish isolation; and yet there is a true and very important sense, with reference to our subject, in which every household should dwell under such a roof, and amid such surroundings, as suit itself alone. Certain it is that, as light can not be hidden, so a home thus appointed will shine forth with an attractive radiance, all the more effective for being undesigned. True domestic taste, however, is, in its own nature, like virtue, a reward to itself.

But, while the home is to be ordered for retirement, it is not a place for disguises: an open frankness becomes it, and so it should itself be without any false pretences, either in materials used, or in construction, or in decoration. Truth should be written all over it in letters of light. Let me bere refer, for a development of this thought, to Ruskin's well-known chapter on truth as one of the lamps of architecture—a reference always timely-which classifies architectural deceits under three heads: 1. the suggestion of a mode of structure, or support, other than the true one, as in pendants of late Gothic roofs, 2. the painting of surfaces to represent some other material than that of which they actually consist (as in marbling of wood), or the deceptive representation of sculptured ornament upon them, and 3. the use of cast, or machine-made, ornament.

Again, as home is for repose, nothing should find place in or about it which is suggestive of danger, or agitating to any sensibility, or fitted to let in, rather than to exclude, carethough of care must be said, as the poet says of another certair. visitor:

"Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres "

Many violations of this principle might be referred to, for illustration. In domestic architecture, how many towers do we see which, by their position or construction, rather threaten to crush and destroy than defend! how many garlands of joinery which seem made on purpose to conduct a consuming flame, some day, along the eaves of the house! how often are entrance-porches so built as to endanger the heads of those who venture under them! If one enters in safety, how little of solid durability, or restfulness of aspect, meets one within! not unfrequently one finds door-openings without either proper lintels or side-supports; walls and floors so unsubstantial that sounds are communicated over the whole house, and it shakes with every foot-fall. Then, if we turn to decorative features, why should Crucifixions, Martyrdoms of the Saints, Assassination-scenes, or other forms of human agony, appear under the home roof, where the spirit, wearied and jaded by the struggles and roughnesses of daily outdoor-life, may legitimately ask to find rest? The primitive Christian, who could live in safety only within a catacomb, made even that rough dwelling-place restful, by excluding all intimations of pain, all harrowing suggestions of even that great Sacrifice on which hung all his hopes. Many an abode of Christians in these days seems fitted up more as a penitential chapel than as a place for cheerful

repose.

Neither is there repose in too crowded rooms. People fill their parlors with all kinds of curiosities, some so beautiful as to appeal to all tastes, some, having a meaning in their own countries, either sacred or jocose, which to us are simply monstrosities, ugly or grotesque. Amid the medley of "objets de vertu" and "bric-a-brac," as you turn to avoid upsetting a rich Japanese vase, you stumble upon a porcelain dog or Chinese idol, or you get entangled amid Turkish rugs and mats of Russian fur. With such a variety to examine, to study, to wonder at or admire, the eye and mind become weary, and cease to enjoy.

Think, too, of the disturbance caused to one's equanimity by those mirror-like floors of inlaid woods, however beautiful to the eye, on which one has need of parlor-skates, in order safely to pass from one side to another; and still more when pirouettes of courtesy have to be performed upon them!