Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/100

88 their bases in the climate of Italy. In that zone, however, the olive grows in great luxuriance, with the cypress, orange, aloe, myrtle, and vine, the latter always trellised.

Now, as to the situation of the cottage, we have already seen that great humility was necessary, both in the building and its site, to prevent it from offending us by an apparent struggle with forces, compared with which its strength was dust: but we cannot have this extreme size: but, where every yard of the cultivated country has its tale to tell; where it is perpetually intersected by rivers whose names are meaning music, and glancing with cities and villages, every one of which has its own halo round its head; and where the eye is carried by the clearness of the air over the blue of the farthest horizon, without finding one wreath of mist, or one shadowy cloud, to check the distinctness of the impression; the mental emotions excited are richer, and deeper, and swifter than could be awakened by the noblest hills of the earth, unconnected with the deeds of men.Lastly. The plain country of Italy has not even to choose between the glory of distance and of size, for it has both. I do not think there is a spot, from Venice to Messina, where two ranges of mountains, at the least, are not in sight at the same time. In Lombardy, the Alps are on one side, the Apennines on the other; in the Venetian territory, the Alps, Apennines, and Euganean Hills; going southwards, the Apennines always, their outworks running far towards the sea, and the coast itself frequently mountainous. Now, the aspect of a noble range of hills, at a considerable distance, is, in our opinion, far more imposing (considered in the abstract) than they are seen near: their height is better told, their outlines softer and more melodious, their majesty more mysterious. But, in Italy, they gain more by distance than majesty: they gain life. They cease to be the cold forgetful things they were; they hold the noble plains in their lap, and become venerable, as having looked down upon them, and watched over them for ever, unchanging; they become part of the pictures of associations; we endow them with memory, and then feel them to be possessed of all that is glorious on earth.