Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/215

Rh settle the questions of form and colour, and we shall then have closed the most tiresome investigation, which we shall be called upon to enter into; inasmuch as the principles which we may arrive at in considering the architecture of defence, though we hope they may be useful in the abstract, will demand no application to native landscape, in which, happily, no defence is now required; and those relating to sacred edifices will, we also hope, be susceptible of more interest than can possibly be excited by the most degraded branch of the whole art of architecture, one hardly worthy of being included under the name; that, namely, with which we have lately been occupied, whose ostensible object is the mere provision of shelter and comfort for the despicable shell within whose darkness and corruption that purity of perception to which all high art is addressed is, during its immaturity, confined.

There are two modes in which any mental or material effect may be increased by contrast, or by assimilation. Supposing that we have a certain number of features, or existences, under a given influence; then, by subjecting another feature to the same influence, we increase the universality, and therefore the effect, of that influence; but, by introducing another feature, not under the same influence, we render the subjection of the other features more palpable, and therefore more effective. For example, let the influence be one of shade (Fig. 41), to which a certain number of objects are subjected in a and b. To