Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/27

Rh There is no pretence to gaiety in its appearance, no green flower-pots in ornamental lattices; but the substantial style of any ornaments it may possess, the recessed windows, the stone carvings, and the general size of the whole, unite to produce an impression of the building having once been fit for the residence of prouder inhabitants; of its having once possessed strength, which is now withered, and beauty, which is now faded. This sense of something lost; something which has been, and is not, is precisely what is wanted. The imagination is set actively to work in an instant; and we are made aware of the presence of a beauty, the more pleasing because visionary; and, while the eye is pitying the actual humility of the present building, the mind is admiring the imagined pride of the past. Every mark of dilapidation increases this feeling; while these very marks (the fractures of the stone, the lichens of the mouldering wall, and the graceful lines of the sinking roof) are all delightful in themselves.

Thus, we have shown that, while the English cottage is pretty from its propriety, the French cottage, having the same connexion with its climate, country, and people, produces such a contrast of feeling as bestows on it a beauty addressing itself to the mind, and is therefore in perfectly good taste. If we are asked why, in this instance, good taste produces only what every traveller feels to be not in the least striking, we reply that, where the surrounding circumstances are unfavourable, the very adaptation to them