Another spoils a
pretty bit of crag by building below it, and has two or three tons of
stone dropped through his roof, the first frosty night. Another occupies
the turfy slope of some soft lake promontory, and has his cook washed
away by the first flood. We do not remember ever having seen a
dwelling-house destroying the effect of a landscape, of which,
considered merely as a habitation, we should wish to be the possessor.]
[Footnote 46: We are not thinking of the effect upon the human frame of
the air which is favorable to vegetation. Chemically considered, the
bracing breeze of the more sterile soil is the most conducive to health,
and is practically so, when the frame is not perpetually exposed to it;
but the keenness which checks the growth of the plant is, in all
probability, trying, to say the least, to the constitution of a
resident.]
[Footnote 47: We hope the English language may long retain this corrupt
but energetic superlative.]
219. This position, being once granted, will save us a great deal of
trouble; for it will put out of our way, as totally unfit for villa
residence, nine-tenths of all mountain scenery; beginning with such
bleak and stormy bits of hillside as that which was metamorphosed into
something like a forest by the author of "Waverley;" laying an equal
veto on all the severe landscapes of such districts of minor mountains
as the Scotch Highlands and North Wales; and finishing by setting aside
all the higher sublimity of Alp and Apennine.
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