The great one cause of all the errors in this
branch of architecture is, the principle of imitation, at once the most
baneful and the most unintellectual, yet perhaps the most natural, that
the human mind can encourage or act upon.[50] Let it once be thoroughly
rooted out, and the cottage villa will become a beautiful and
interesting element of our landscape.
[Footnote 50: In Sec. 166 we noticed the kind of error most common in
amateur designs, and we traced that error to its great first cause, the
assumption of the humor, instead of the true character, for a guide; but
we did not sufficiently specify the mode in which that first cause
operated, by prompting to imitation. By imitation we do not mean
accurate copying, neither do we mean working under the influence of the
feelings by which we may suppose the originators of a given model to
have been actuated; but we mean the intermediate step of endeavoring to
combine old materials in a novel manner. True copying may be disdained
by architects, but it should not be disdained by nations; for when the
feelings of the time in which certain styles had their origin have
passed away, any examples of the same style will invariably be failures,
unless they be copies. It is utter absurdity to talk of building Greek
edifices now; no man ever will, or ever can, who does not believe in the
Greek mythology; and, precisely by so much as he diverges from the
technicality of strict copyism, he will err.
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