Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/147

Rh itself, so many geological formations, each giving a peculiar character to the country which it composes, that there is hardly a district five miles broad, which preserves the same features of landscape through its whole width. If, for example, six foreigners were to land severally at Glasgow, at Aberystwith, at Falmouth, at Brighton, at Yarmouth and at Newcastle, and to confine their investigations to the country within twenty miles of them, what different impressions would they receive of British landscape! If, therefore, there be as many forms of edifice as there are peculiarities of situation, we can have no national style; and, if we abandon the idea of a correspondence with situation, we lose the only criterion capable of forming a national style.