Nature has set aside her sublime bits for us to feel and think in; she
has pointed out her productive bits for us to sleep and eat in; and, if
we sleep and eat amongst the sublimity, we are brutal; if we poetize
amongst the cultivation, we are absurd. There are the time and place for
each state of existence, and we should not jumble that which Nature has
separated. She has addressed herself, in one part, wholly to the mind;
there is nothing for us to eat but bilberries, nothing to rest upon but
rock, and we have no business to concoct picnics, and bring cheese, and
ale, and sandwiches, in baskets, to gratify our beastly natures, where
Nature never intended us to eat (if she had, we needn't have brought the
baskets). In the other part, she has provided for our necessities; and
we are very absurd, if we make ourselves fantastic, instead of
comfortable. Therefore, all that we ought to do in the hill villa is, to
adapt it for the habitation of a man of the highest faculties of
perception and feeling; but only for the habitation of his hours of
common sense, not of enthusiasm; it must be his dwelling as a man, not
as a spirit; as a thing liable to decay, not as an eternal energy; as a
perishable, not as an immortal.
249. Keeping, then, in view these distinctions of form between the two
villas, the remaining considerations relate equally to both.
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