oughly rooted out, and the cottage villa will become a beautiful and interesting element of our landscape.
So much for size. The question of position need not detain us long, as the principles advanced at page 88, are true generally, with one exception. Beautiful and calm the situation must always be, but, in England, not conspicuous. In Italy, the dwelling of the descendants of those whose former life has bestowed on every scene the greater part of the majesty which it possesses, ought to have a dignity inherent in it, which would be shamed by shrinking back from the sight of men, and majesty enough to prevent such non-retirement from becoming intrusive; but the spirit of the English landscape is simple, and pastoral and mild, devoid, also, of high associations (for, in the Highlands and Wales, almost every spot which has
mind and eye; but it is useless to think of adopting the architecture of the Greek to the purposes of the Frank: it never has been done, and never will be. We delight, indeed, in observing the rise of such a building as La Madeleine: beautiful, because accurately copied; useful, as teaching the eye of every passer-by. But we must not think of its purpose: it is wholly unadapted for Christian worship; and, were it as bad Greek as our National Gallery, it would be equally unfit. The mistake of our architects in general is, that they fancy they are speaking good English by speaking bad Greek. We wish, therefore, that copying were more in vogue than it is. But imitation, the endeavor to be Gothic, or. Tyrolese, or Venetian, without the slightest grain of Gothic or Venetian feeling; the futile effort to splash a building into age, or daub it into dignity, to zigzag it into sanctity, or slit it into ferocity, when its shell is neither ancient nor dignified, and its spirit neither priestly nor baronial; this is the degrading vice of the age; fostered, as if man's reason were but a step between the brains of a kitten and a monkey, in the mixed love of despicable excitement and miserable mimicry. If the
