An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is
just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a _necessaire_ for
the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary.
These, with an adequate contingent of musical snuff-boxes, _or molu_
clocks, China figures, alabaster vases and flower-pots, together with a
discreet superfluity of cut-paper nondescripts, albums, screens, toys,
prints, caricatures, duodecimo classics, new novels and souvenirs, to
cut a dash, and litter the tables, must be allowed to the taste and
refinement of the times. But surely some space should be left for
depositing a coffee-cup, or laying down a useful volume, when the hand
may require to be relieved from its weight, or when it is proper to take
a pinch of snuff, or agreeable to wipe one's forehead. Josses, beakers,
and Sevres' vases have unquestionably the _entree_ into a genteel
apartment; but they are not entitled to a monopoly of the _locale_; nor
are Roman antiquities, or statues even by Canova, justifiable in
usurping the elbow-room of living men and women. Most unfortunately for
myself, I have a very small house, and a wife of the most enlarged
taste; and the disproportion between these blessings is so great, that I
cannot move without the risk of a heavy pecuniary loss by breakage, and
a heavier personal affliction in perpetual imputations of awkwardness.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53