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Ruskin, John, 1819-1900

"The Poetry of Architecture"

We shall have occasion to allude to this subject again.
[See _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, III. 13, 23.]]
[Illustration: Fig. 13. Windows.]
181. These hints will be sufficient to explain our meaning, and we have
not space to do more, as the object of these papers is rather to observe
than to advise. Besides, in questions of expression so intricate, it is
almost impossible to advance fixed principles; every mind will have
perceptions of its own, which will guide its speculations, every hand,
and eye, and peculiar feeling, varying even from year to year. We have
only started the subject of correspondence with individual character,
because we think that imaginative minds might take up the idea with some
success, as furnishing them with a guide in the variation of their
designs, more certain than mere experiment on unmeaning forms, or than
ringing indiscriminate changes on component parts of established beauty.
To the reverie, rather than the investigation, to the dream, rather than
the deliberation, of the architect, we recommend it, as a branch of art
in which instinct will do more than precept, and inspiration than
technicality. The correspondence of our villa architecture with our
natural scenery may be determined with far greater accuracy, and will
require careful investigation.


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