Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/49

Rh ; and there must be proportion between objects, or they cannot be compared. If the Parthenon, or the Pyramid of Cheops, or St. Peter's, were placed in the same situation, the mind would first form a just estimate of the magnificence of the building, and then be trebly impressed with the size of the masses which overwhelmed it. The architecture would not lose, and the crags would gain, by the juxtaposition; but the cottage, which must be felt to be a thing which the weakest stream of the Alps could toss down before it like a foam globe, is offensively contemptible; it is like a child's toy let fall accidentally on the hill-side; it does not unite with the scene; it is not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility and peace; but draws attention upon itself by its pretension to decoration, while its decorations themselves cannot bear examination, because they are useless, unmeaning, and incongruous.

So much for its faults; and I have had no mercy upon them, the rather, because I am always afraid of being biassed in its favour by my excessive love for its sweet nationality. Now for its beauties. Wherever it is found, it always suggests ideas of a gentle, pure, and pastoral life. One feels that the peasants whose hands carved the planks so neatly, and adorned their cottage so industriously, and still preserve it so perfectly, and so neatly, can be no dull, drunken, lazy boors: one feels, also, that it requires both firm resolution, and determined industry, to maintain so successful a struggle against "the crush of