Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/89

Rh a good example. In districts of this kind, all is change; one year's crop has no memory of its predecessor; all is activity, prosperity and usefulness; nothing is left to the imagination; there is no obscurity, no poetry, no nonsense; the colours of the landscape are bright and varied; it is thickly populated, and glowing with animal life. Here, then, the character of the cottage must be cheerfulness: its colours may be vivid; white is always beautiful; even red tiles are allowable, and red bricks endurable. Neatness will not spoil it; the angle of its roof may be acute, its windows sparkling, and its roses red and abundant; but it must not be ornamented nor fantastic, it must be evidently built for the uses of common life, and have a matter-of-fact, business-like air about it. Its outhouses, and pigsties, and dunghills should, therefore, be kept in sight: the latter may be made very pretty objects by twisting them with the pitchfork, and plaiting them into braids, as the Swiss do.

3. The Wild, or grey, Country. "Wild" is not exactly a correct epithet; we mean wide, unenclosed, treeless undulations of land, whether cultivated or not. The greater part of northern France, though well brought under the plough, would come under the denomination of grey country. Occasional masses of monotonous forest do not destroy this character. Here, size is desirable, and massiness of form; but we must have no brightness of colour in the cottage, otherwise it would draw the eye to it at three miles off, and the whole landscape would be covered