The third contained a plan of the building of Ackworth-school. This was
hung up as a descriptive view of a public seminary, instituted and kept
up by the subscription and care of the society at large.
But though all the prints, that have been mentioned, were hung up in
frames on the motives severally assigned to them, no others were to be
seen as their companions. It is in short not the practice[38] of the
society to decorate their houses in this manner.
[Footnote 38: There are still individual exceptions. Some Quakers have
come accidentally into possession of printings and engravings in frame,
which, being innocent in their subject and their lesson, they would have
thought it superstitious to discard.]
Prints in frames, if hung up promiscuously in a room, would be
considered as ornamental furniture, or as furniture for shew. They would
therefore come under the denomination of superfluities; and the
admission of such, in the way that other people admit them would be
considered as an adoption of the empty customs or fashions of the world.
But though the Quakers are not in the practice of hanging up prints in
frames, yet there are amateurs among them, who have a number and variety
of prints in their possession. But these appear chiefly in collections,
bound together in books, or preserved in book covers, and not in frames
as ornamental furniture for their rooms.
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