Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/202

190 Lago Maggiore possesses scarcely one villa of importance, besides those on the Borromean Islands. Yet the Lago Maggiore is far better adapted for producing and sustaining a pleasurable impression, than that of Como. The first thing, then, which the architect has to do in hill country is, to bring his employer down from heroics to common sense; to teach him that, although it might be very well for a man like Pliny, whose whole spirit and life was wrapt up in that of nature, to set himself down under the splash of a cascade 400 ft. high, such escapades are not becoming in English gentlemen; and that it is necessary, for his own satisfaction, as well as that of others, that he should keep in the most quiet and least pretending corners of the landscape which he has chosen.

Having got his employer well under control, he has two points to consider. First, where he will spoil least; and, secondly, where he will gain most. Now, we may spoil a landscape it two ways; either by destroying an association connected with it, or a beauty inherent in it. With the first barbarism we have nothing to do; for it is one which would not be permitted on a large scale; and, even if it were, could not be perpetrated by any man of the slightest education. No one, having any pretensions to be called a human being, would build himself a house on the meadow of the Rutlin, or by the farm of, or on the lonely isle on Loch Katrine. Of the injustice of the second barbarism we have spoken already; and it is the object of this paper to show how it may be avoided, as