Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/116

104 which the eye passes over ten or twenty miles in one long glance, and the prevailing colour of whose borders is, as we noticed when speaking of the Italian cottage, blue. The white reflections are here excessively valuable, giving space, brilliancy, and transparency; and furnish one very powerful apology, even did other objections render an apology necessary, for the pale tone of the colour of the villas, whose reflections, owing to their size and conspicuous situations, always take a considerable part in the scene, and are therefore things to be attentively considered in the erection of such buildings, particularly in a climate whose calmness renders its lakes quiet for the greater part of the day. Nothing, in fact, can be more beautiful than the intermingling of these bright lines with the darkness of the reversed cypresses seen against the deep azure of the distant hills in the crystalline waters of the lake, of which some one aptly says, "Deep within its azure rest, white villages sleep silently;" or than their columnar perspective, as village after village catches the light, and strikes the image to the very quietest recess of the narrow water, and the very furthest hollow of the folded hills.

From all this, it appears that the effect of the white villa in water is delightful. On land it is quite as important, but more doubtful. The first objection, which strikes us instantly when we imagine such a building, is, the want of repose, the startling glare of effect, induced by its unsubdued tint. But this objection does not strike us when we see the building; a circumstance which was partly