This sense of something lost,
something which has been, and is not, is precisely what is wanted. The
imagination is set actively to work in an instant; and we are made aware
of the presence of a beauty, the more pleasing because visionary; and,
while the eye is pitying the actual humility of the present building,
the mind is admiring the imagined pride of the past. Every mark of
dilapidation increases this feeling; while these very marks (the
fractures of the stone, the lichens of the moldering walls, and the
graceful lines of the sinking roof) are all delightful in themselves.
21. Thus, we have shown that, while the English cottage is pretty from
its propriety, the French cottage, having the same connection with its
climate, country, and people, produces such a contrast of feeling as
bestows on it a beauty addressing itself to the mind, and is therefore
in perfectly good taste. If we are asked why, in this instance, good
taste produces only what every traveler feels to be not in the least
striking, we reply that, where the surrounding circumstances are
unfavorable, the very adaptation to them which we have declared to be
necessary renders the building uninteresting; and that, in the next
paper, we shall see a very different result from the operations of
equally good taste in adapting a cottage to its situation, in one of the
noblest districts of Europe.
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