Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/192

180 possessed of so much common sense as to put up with a tile roof. When this is the case, the flat slabs of the upper limestone (ragstone) are usually better than slate.

For the rest, it is always to be kept in view, that the prevailing character of the whole is to be that of graceful simplicity; distinguished from the simplicity of the Italian edifice, by being that of utility instead of that of pride. Consequently, the building must not be Gothic or Elizabethan; it may be as commonplace as the proprietor likes, provided its proportions be good; but nothing can ever excuse one acute angle, or one decorated pinnacle, both being direct interruptions of the repose with which the eye is indulged by the undulations of the surrounding scenery. Tower and fortress outlines are, indeed, agreeable, from their fine grouping and roundness; but we do not allude to them, because nothing can be more absurd than the humor prevailing at the present day among many of our peaceable old gentlemen, who never smelt powder in their lives, to eat their morning muffin in a savage-looking round tower, and admit quiet old ladies to a tea-party under the range of twenty-six cannon, which, it is lucky for the china, are all wooden ones, as they are, in all probability, accurately and awfully pointed into the drawing-room windows.