88. Now, this feeling of mixed melancholy and veneration is the one of
all others which the modern cottage must not be allowed to violate. It
may be fantastic or rich in detail; for the one character will make it
look old-fashioned, and the other will assimilate with the intertwining
of leaf and bough around it: but it must not be spruce, or natty, or
very bright in color; and the older it looks the better.
A little grotesqueness in form is the more allowable, because the
imagination is naturally active in the obscure and indefinite daylight
of wood scenery; conjures up innumerable beings, of every size and
shape, to people its 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.
89. These characters being kept in view, as objects to be attained, the
remaining considerations are technical.
For the form. Select any well-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 and
the two points where it unites itself with neighboring masses. Strike a
circle through these three points; and the angle contained in the
segment cut off by a line joining the two lower points is to be the
angle of the cottage roof.
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