Half of the whitewash is worn off, and the
other half colored by various mosses and wandering lichens, which have
been permitted to vegetate upon it, and which, though beautiful,
constitute a kind of beauty from which the ideas of age and decay are
inseparable. The tall roof of the garret window stands fantastically
out; and underneath it, where, in England, we had a plain double
lattice, is a deep recess, flatly arched at the top, built of solid
masses of gray stone, fluted on the edge; while the brightness of the
glass within (if there be any) is lost in shade, causing the recess to
appear to the observer like a dark eye. The door has the same character:
it is also of stone, which is so much broken and disguised as to prevent
it from giving any idea of strength or stability. The entrance is always
open; no roses, or anything else, are wreathed about it; several
outhouses, built in the same style, give the building extent; and the
group (in all probability, the dependency of some large old chateau in
the distance) does not peep out of copse, or thicket, or a group of tall
and beautiful trees, but stands comfortlessly between two individuals
of the columns of long-trunked facsimile elms, which keep guard along
the length of the public road.
14. Now, let it be observed how perfectly, how singularly, the
distinctive characters of these two cottages agree with those of the
countries in which they are built; and of the people for whose use they
are constructed.
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