Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/38

16 The key-note of this harmony is the rock of the Acropolis.

When this great natural landmark became the impregnable citadel and hallowed sanctuary of the Athenian people, their genius converted it at the same time into the noblest base which has ever been employed in architecture. When our eye glances from the precipitous weather-stained sides of this rocky base to the marble columns standing in relief against the sky above, there is a sudden transition from the picturesque confusion of nature to the symmetry of art, from irregular to geometrical forms, from rugged surfaces to surfaces wrought to a polish like that of ivory, and jointed with the precision of the finest inlaid-work.

The suddenness of this transition does not shock, but, on the contrary, delights the eye; there is harmony in the apparent discord. But if we take away one of the two elements out of which this harmony is composed, the charm is dissolved. If, for instance, such an edifice as the Parthenon were planted on a dead level, and mewed up in the hot bricky streets of a crowded city, much of the original effect of the design would be destroyed. So again, if the Acropolis were dismantled of all with which art has invested it, and despoiled of its crown of temples, it would remain a naked barren rock, unredeemed by human sympathies, just as it must have appeared to the first settlers who pitched their tents in the plain of Attica.

The attempt in modern Europe to transplant architecture from its natural soil, and to imitate it