Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/230

218 as a man, not as a spirit; as a thing liable to decay, not as an eternal energy; as a perishable, not as an immortal.

Keeping, then, in view these distinctions of form between the two villas, the remaining considerations relate equally to both.

We have several times alluded to the extreme richness and variety of hill foregrounds, as an internal energy to which there must be no contrast. Rawness of colour is to be especially avoided, but so, also, is poverty of effect. It will, therefore, add much to the beauty of the building, if, in any conspicuous and harsh angle or shadowy moulding, we introduce a wreath of carved leaf-work, in stone, of course. This sounds startling and expensive; but we are not thinking of expense: what ought to be, not what can be afforded, is the question. Besides, when all expense in shamming castles, building pinnacles, and all other fantasticisms, has been shown to be injurious, that which otherwise would have been wasted in plaster battlements, to do harm, may surely be devoted to stone leafage, to do good. Now, if there be too much, or too conspicuous, ornament, it will destroy simplicity and humility, and everything which we have been endeavouring to get; therefore, the architect must be careful, and had better have immediate recourse to that natural beauty with which he is now endeavouring to assimilate. When Nature determines on decorating a piece of projecting rock, she begins with the bold projecting surface, to which the eye is naturally