Taste is a desire and appreciation of beauty. Culture is the regulated use and enjoyment of beauty. The word taste, however, is frequently used in this sense of culture. But many people have an incipient taste without any culture. This is the incipient condition of culture. In this state of development, taste is often a source of more trouble than of enjoyment. It generally overdoes everything. Its indiscriminating profusion is overwhelming and wearisome.
This is exemplified in young writers, in whom feeling and imagination predominate over thought and judgment; and by the same class of minds in all departments of art; and some of these, unfortunately, remain, in this sense, always young.
In the home, this crude condition of the aesthetic faculty is very common; and with very many women it goes through all their life to the end. They have no sense of proportion. They load and overload everything with what they consider ornament. To do this, and preserve this, demands, as they suppose, their constant care, and also a sleepless vigilance, lest, by some circumstance or careless person, their little, and elaborate, and even painful cosmos shall suffer some trifling derangement. They are thus worried out of all repose, and out of all the dignity and sweetness of true aesthetic feeling. Easily and often annoyed themselves, they annoy and irritate all who have to come within the range of their little world, especially children and aged people, who cannot endure much artificial restriction.
