Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/56

44 avoidance of the evil, be barely visible: it should not tell as a cottage on the eye, though it should on the mind; for be it observed that if it is only by the closest investigation that we can ascertain it to be a human habitation, it will answer the purpose of increasing the solitude quite as well as if it were evidently so; because this impression is produced by its appeal to the thoughts, not by its effect on the eye. Its colour, therefore, should be as nearly as possible that of the hill on which, or the crag beneath which, it is placed: its form, one that will incorporate well with the ground, and approach that of a large stone more than of anything else. The colour will consequently, if this rule be followed, be subdued and greyish, but rather warm; and the form simple, graceful, and unpretending. The building should retain the same general character on a closer examination. Everything about it should be natural, and should appear as if the influences and forces which were in operation around it had been too strong to be resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check their power, or conceal the evidence of their action, entirely unavailing. It cannot but be an alien child of the mountains; but it must show that it has been adopted and cherished by them. This effect is only attainable by great ease of outline and variety of colour; peculiarities which, as will be presently seen, the Westmoreland cottage possesses in a supereminent degree.

Another feeling, with which one is impressed during a mountain ramble, is humility. I found fault with the