Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/87

Rh alleys and smile through its thickets; and is by no means displeased to find some of its inventions half-realized, in a decorated panel or grinning extremity of a rafter.

These characters being kept in view, as objects to be attained, the remaining considerations are technical.

For the form. Select any well-grown grown group of the tree which prevails most near the proposed site of the cottage. Its summit will be a rounded mass. Take the three principal points of its curve; namely, its apex (c), and the two points where it unites itself with neighbouring

masses (a and b, Fig. 26). Strike a circle through these three points; and the angle contained in the segment cut off by a line joining a and b is to be the angle of the cottage roof. (Of course we are not thinking of interior convenience; the architect must establish his model of beauty first, and then approach it as nearly as he can.) This angle will generally be very obtuse; and this is one reason why the Swiss cottage is always beautiful when it is set among walnut or chestnut trees. Its obtuse roof is just about the true angle. With pines or larches, the angle should not be regulated by the form of the tree, but