The Poetry of Architecture: Or, the Architecture of the Nations of Europe Considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National CharacterRuskin, John
Philosophy
The Poetry of Architecture: Or, the Architecture of the Nations of Europe Considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character
Ruskin, John
Architecture
he is etherealizing an impression which the mind naturally receives from
the flower. Consequently, as it is only by their natural influence that
flowers can address the mind through the eye, we must read Shelley, to
learn how to use flowers, and Shakspeare, to learn to love them. In both
writers we find the wild flower possessing soul as well as life, and
mingling its influence most intimately, like an untaught melody, with
the deepest and most secret streams of human emotion.]
212. Perhaps we should apologize for introducing this in the
_Architectural Magazine_; but it is not out of place: the garden is
almost a necessary adjunct of the Elizabethan villa, and all garden
architecture is utterly useless unless it be assisted by the botanical
effect.
These, then, are a few of the more important principles of architecture,
which are to be kept in view in the blue and in the green country. The
wild, or gray, country is never selected, in Britain, as the site of a
villa; and, therefore, it only remains for us to offer a few remarks on
a subject as difficult as it is interesting and important, the
architecture of the villa in British hill, or brown, country.
VII.
THE BRITISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
_D. Hill, or Brown Country._
"Vivite contenti casulis et collibus istis."--Juvenal [xiv. 179.]
213. In the Boulevard des Italiens, just at the turning into the Rue de
la Paix (in Paris), there stand a few dusky and withered trees, beside a
kind of dry ditch, paved at the bottom, into which a carriage can with
some difficulty descend, and which affords access (not in an unusual
manner) to the ground floor of a large and dreary-looking house, whose
passages are dark and confined, whose rooms are limited in size, and
whose windows command an interesting view of the dusky trees before
mentioned.
This is the town residence of one of the Italian noblemen, whose country
house has already been figured as a beautiful example of the villas of
the Lago di Como. That villa, however, though in one of the loveliest
situations that hill, and wave, and heaven ever combined to adorn, and
though itself one of the most delicious habitations that luxury ever
projected or wealth procured, is very rarely honored by the presence of
its master; while attractions of a very different nature retain him,
winter after winter, in the dark chambers of the Boulevard des Italiens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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