Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/66

54 by whitewashing the whole. The cottages of Cumberland would suffer much by this piece of improvement, were it not for the salutary operation of mountain rains and mountain winds.

So much for the hill dwellings of our own country. I think the examination of the five examples of the cottage which I have given have furnished all the general principles which are important or worthy of consideration; and I shall therefore devote no more time to the contemplation of individual buildings. But, before I leave the cottage altogether, it will be necessary to notice a part of the building which I have in the separate instances purposely avoided mentioning, that I might have the advantage of immediate comparison; a part exceedingly important, and which seems to have been essential to the palace as well as to the cottage, ever since the time when Perdiccas received his significant gift of the sun from his Macedonian master ; and then I shall conclude the subject by a few general remarks on modern ornamental cottages, illustrative of the principle so admirably developed in the beauty of the Westmoreland building, to which, it must be remembered, the palm was assigned, in preference to the Switzer's; not because it was more laboured, but because it was more natural.

Oxford, Jan. 1838.