The following text is from Anthony Trollope’s 1855 novel The Warden.
The narrator is describing a rectory, the residence of a clergyperson.
There was an air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without any sacrifice of propriety, colours might have been better chosen and lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred; at any rate, it was not without ample consideration that those thick, dark, costly carpets were put down: those embossed, but sombre [wallpapers] hung up: those heavy curtains draped so as to half exclude the light of the sun.
The narrator is describing a rectory, the residence of a clergyperson.
There was an air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without any sacrifice of propriety, colours might have been better chosen and lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred; at any rate, it was not without ample consideration that those thick, dark, costly carpets were put down: those embossed, but sombre [wallpapers] hung up: those heavy curtains draped so as to half exclude the light of the sun.