Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/204

192 kind or another. For the very chiefest part of the character of the edifice of pleasure is, and must be, its perfect ease, its appearance of felicitous repose. This it can never have where the nature and expression of the land near it reminds us of the necessity of labour, and where the earth is niggardly of all that constitutes its beauty and our pleasure; this it can only have, where the presence of man seems the natural consequence of an ample provision for his enjoyment, not the continuous struggle of suffering existence with a rude heaven and rugged soil. There is nobility in such a struggle, but not when it is maintained by the inhabitant of the villa, in whom it is unnatural, and therefore injurious in its effect. The narrow cottage on the desolate moor, or the stalwart hospice on the crest of the Alps, each leaves an ennobling impression of energy and endurance; but the possessor of the villa, should call, not upon our admiration, but upon our sympathy; and his function is to deepen the impression of the beauty and the fulness of creation, not to exhibit the majesty of man; to show, in the intercourse of earth and her children, not how her severity may be mocked by their heroism, but how her bounty may be honoured in their enjoyment.

This position, being once granted, will save us a great deal of trouble; for it will put out of our way, as totally unfit for villa residence, nine-tenths of all mountain