Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/233

Rh All this will require care in designing; but, as we have said before, we can always do without decoration; but, if we have it, it must be well done. It is not of the slightest use to economise; every farthing improperly saved does a shilling's worth of damage; and that is getting a bargain the wrong way. When one branch or group balances another, they must be different in composition. The same group may be introduced several times in different parts, but not when there is correspondence, or the effect will be unnatural; and it can hardly be too often repeated, that the ornament must be kept out of the general effect, must be invisible to all but the near observer, and, even to him, must not become a necessary part of the design, but must be sparingly and cautiously applied, so as to appear to have been thrown in by chance here and there, as Nature would have thrown in a bunch of herbage, affording adornment without concealment, and relief without interruption.

So much for form. The question of colour has already been discussed at some length, in speaking of the cottage; but it is to be noticed, that the villa, from the nature of its situation, gets the higher hills back into a distance which is three or four times more blue than any piece of scenery entering into combination with the cottage; so that more warmth of colour is allowable in the building, as well as greater cheerfulness of effect. It should not look like stone, as the cottage should, but should tell as a building on the mind as well as the eye. White, therefore, is