95. And now, farewell to the cottage, and, with it, to the humility of
natural scenery. We are sorry to leave it; not that we have any idea of
living in a cottage, as a comfortable thing; not that we prefer mud to
marble, or deal to mahogany; but that, with it, we leave much of what is
most beautiful of earth, the low and bee-inhabited scenery, which is
full of quiet and prideless emotion, of such calmness as we can imagine
prevailing over our earth when it was new in heaven. We are going into
higher walks of architecture, where we shall find a less close
connection established between the building and the soil on which it
stands, or the air with which it is surrounded, but a closer connection
with the character of its inhabitant. We shall have less to do with
natural feeling, and more with human passion; we are coming out of
stillness into turbulence, out of seclusion into the multitude, out of
the wilderness into the world.
_PART II._
The Villa.
THE MOUNTAIN VILLA: LAGO DI COMO:
THE LOWLAND VILLA:--ENGLAND:
THE BRITISH VILLA: PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
I.
THE MOUNTAIN VILLA--LAGO DI COMO.
96. In all arts or sciences, before we can determine what is just or
beautiful in a group, we must ascertain what is desirable in the parts
which compose it, separately considered; and therefore it will be most
advantageous in the present case, to keep out of the village and the
city, until we have searched hill and dale for examples of isolated
buildings.
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