Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/222

210 individual object, the result is repetition, not unity: and contrast is not merely agreeable, but necessary. Thus, in Fig. 42, the number of objects, forming the line of beauty, is pervaded by one simple energy; but in Fig. 43 that energy is separately manifested in each, and the result is painful monotony. Parallel right lines, without grouping, are always liable to this objection; and, therefore, a distant view of a flat country is never beautiful, unless its horizontals are lost in richness of vegetation, as in Lombardy; or broken with masses of forest, or with distant hills. If none of these interruptions take place, there is immediate monotony, and no introduction can be more delightful than such a tower in the distance as Strasburg, or, indeed, than any architectural combination of verticals. Peterborough is a beautiful instance of such an adaptation. It is always, then, to be remembered that repetition is not assimilation.

5thly. When any attribute is necessarily beautiful, that is, beautiful in every place and circumstance, we need hardly say that the contrast consisting in its absence is painful. It is only when beauty is local or accidental that opposition may be employed.

6thly. The edge of all contrasts, so to speak, should be as soft as is consistent with decisive effect. We mean, that a gradual change is bettcer than instantaneous transfiguration; for, though always less effective, it is more agreeable. But this must be left very much to the judgment.