Part 4 (1/2)
93. Lastly, Hill, or brown, Country. And here if we look to England alone, as peculiarly a cottage country, the remarks formerly advanced, in the consideration of the Westmoreland cottage, are sufficient; but if we go into mountain districts of more varied character, we shall find a difference existing between every range of hills, which will demand a corresponding difference in the style of their cottages. The principles, however, are the same in all situations, and it would be a hopeless task to endeavor to give more than general principles. In hill country, however, another question is introduced, whose investigation is peculiarly necessary in cases in which the ground has inequality of surface, that of position. And the difficulty here is, not so much to ascertain where the building ought to be, as to put it there, without suggesting any inquiry as to the mode in which it got there; to prevent its just application from appearing artificial. But we cannot enter into this inquiry, before laying down a number of principles of composition, which are applicable, not only to cottages, but generally; and which we cannot deduce until we come to the consideration of buildings in groups.
94. Such are the great divisions under which country and rural buildings may be comprehended; but there are intermediate conditions, in which modified forms of the cottage are applicable; and it frequently happens that country which, considered in the abstract, would fall under one of these cla.s.ses, possesses, owing to its peculiar climate or a.s.sociations, a very different character. Italy, for instance, is blue country; yet it has not the least resemblance to English blue country. We have paid particular attention to wood; first, because we had not, in any previous paper, considered what was beautiful in a forest cottage; and secondly, because in such districts there is generally much more influence exercised by proprietors over their tenantry, than in populous and cultivated districts; and our English park scenery, though exquisitely beautiful, is sometimes, we think, a little monotonous, from the want of this very feature.
95. And now, farewell to the cottage, and, with it, to the humility of natural scenery. We are sorry to leave it; not that we have any idea of living in a cottage, as a comfortable thing; not that we prefer mud to marble, or deal to mahogany; but that, with it, we leave much of what is most beautiful of earth, the low and bee-inhabited scenery, which is full of quiet and prideless emotion, of such calmness as we can imagine prevailing over our earth when it was new in heaven. We are going into higher walks of architecture, where we shall find a less close connection established between the building and the soil on which it stands, or the air with which it is surrounded, but a closer connection with the character of its inhabitant. We shall have less to do with natural feeling, and more with human pa.s.sion; we are coming out of stillness into turbulence, out of seclusion into the mult.i.tude, out of the wilderness into the world.
_PART II._
The Villa.
THE MOUNTAIN VILLA: LAGO DI COMO:
THE LOWLAND VILLA:--ENGLAND:
THE BRITISH VILLA: PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
I.
THE MOUNTAIN VILLA--LAGO DI COMO.
96. In all arts or sciences, before we can determine what is just or beautiful in a group, we must ascertain what is desirable in the parts which compose it, separately considered; and therefore it will be most advantageous in the present case, to keep out of the village and the city, until we have searched hill and dale for examples of isolated buildings. This mode of considering the subject is also agreeable to the feelings, as the transition from the higher orders of solitary edifices, to groups of a.s.sociated edifices, is not so sudden or startling, as that from nature's most humble peace, to man's most turbulent pride.
We have contemplated the rural dwelling of the peasant; let us next consider the ruralized domicile of the gentleman: and here, as before, we shall first determine what is theoretically beautiful, and then observe how far our expectations are fulfilled in individual buildings.
But a few preliminary observations are necessary.
97. Man, the peasant, is a being of more marked national character, than man, the educated and refined. For nationality is founded, in a great degree, on prejudices and feelings inculcated and aroused in youth, which grow inveterate in the mind as long as its views are confined to the place of its birth; its ideas molded by the customs of its country, and its conversation limited to a circle composed of individuals of habits and feelings like its own; but which are gradually softened down, and eradicated, when the mind is led into general views of things, when it is guided by reflection instead of habit, and has begun to lay aside opinions contracted under the influence of a.s.sociation and prepossession, subst.i.tuting in their room philosophical deductions from the calm contemplation of the various tempers, and thoughts, and customs, of mankind. The love of its country will remain with undiminished strength in the cultivated mind, but the national modes of thinking will vanish from the disciplined intellect.
98. Now as it is only by these mannerisms of thought that architecture is affected, we shall find that, the more polished the mind of its designer, the less national will be the building; for its architect will be led away by a search after a model of ideal beauty, and will not be involuntarily guided by deep-rooted feelings, governing irresistibly his heart and hand. He will therefore be in perpetual danger of forgetting the necessary unison of scene and climate, and, following up the chase of the ideal, will neglect the beauty of the natural; an error which he could not commit, were he less general in his views, for then the prejudices to which he would be subject, would be as truly in unison with the objects which created them, as answering notes with the chords which awaken them. We must not, therefore, be surprised, if buildings bearing impress of the exercise of fine thought and high talent in their design, should yet offend us by perpetual discords with scene and climate; and if, therefore, we sometimes derive less instruction, and less pleasure from the columnar portico of the Palace, than from the latched door of the Cottage.
99. Again: man, in his hours of relaxation, when he is engaged in the pursuit of mere pleasure, is less national than when he is under the influence of any of the more violent feelings which agitate everyday life. The reason of this may at first appear somewhat obscure, but it will become evident, on a little reflection. Aristotle's definition of pleasure, perhaps the best ever given, is ”an agitation, and settling of the spirit into its own proper nature;” similar, by the by, to the giving of liberty of motion to the molecules of a mineral, followed by their crystallization, into their own proper form. Now this ”proper nature,” [Greek: hyparchousan physin], is not the acquired national habit, but the common and universal const.i.tution of the human soul. This const.i.tution is kept under by the feelings which prompt to action, for those feelings depend upon parts of character, or of prejudice, which are peculiar to individuals or to nations; and the pleasure which all men seek is a kind of partial casting away of these more active feelings, to return to the calm and unchanging const.i.tution of mind which is the same in all.
100. We shall, therefore, find that man, in the business of his life, in religion, war, or ambition, is national, but in relaxation he manifests a nature common to every individual of his race. A Turk, for instance, and an English farmer, smoking their evening pipes, differ only in so much as the one has a mouthpiece of amber, and the other one of sealing wax; the one has a turban on his head, and the other a night-cap; they are the same in feeling, and to all intents and purposes the same men.
But a Turkish janissary and an English grenadier differ widely in all their modes of thinking, feeling, and acting; they are strictly national. So again, a Tyrolese evening dance, though the costume, and the step, and the music may be different, is the same in feeling as that of the Parisian guinguette; but follow the Tyrolese into their temples, and their deep devotion and beautiful though superst.i.tious reverence will be found very different from any feeling exhibited during a ma.s.s in Notre-Dame. This being the case, it is a direct consequence, that we shall find much nationality in the Church or the Fortress, or in any building devoted to the purposes of active life, but very little in that which is dedicated exclusively to relaxation, the Villa. We shall be compelled to seek out nations of very strong feeling and imaginative disposition, or we shall find no correspondence whatever between their character, and that of their buildings devoted to pleasure.
101. In our own country, for instance, there is not the slightest.
Beginning at the head of Windermere, and running down its border for about six miles, there are six important gentlemen's seats, villas they may be called; the first of which is a square white ma.s.s, decorated with pilasters of no order, set in a green avenue, sloping down to the water; the second is an imitation, we suppose, of something possessing theoretical existence in Switzerland, with sharp gable ends, and wooden flourishes turning the corners, set on a little dumpy mound with a slate wall running all round it, glittering with iron pyrites; the third is a blue dark-looking box, squeezed up into a group of straggly larches, with a bog in front of it; the fourth is a cream-colored domicile, in a large park, rather quiet and unaffected, the best of the four, though that is not saying much; the fifth is an old-fas.h.i.+oned thing, formal, and narrow-windowed, yet gray in its tone, and quiet, and not to be maligned; and the sixth is a nondescript, circular, putty-colored habitation, with a leaden dome on the top of it.
102. If, however, instead of taking Windermere, we trace the sh.o.r.e of the Lago di Como, we shall find some expression and nationality; and there, therefore, will we go, to return, however, to England, when we have obtained some data by which to judge of her more fortunate edifices. We notice the mountain villa first, for two reasons; because effect is always more considered in its erection, than when it is to be situated in a less interesting country, and because the effect desired is very rarely given, there being far greater difficulties to contend with. But one word more, before setting off for the south. Though, as we saw before, the gentleman has less _national_ character than the boor, his _individual_ character is more marked, especially in its finer features, which are clearly and perfectly developed by education; consequently, when the inhabitant of the villa has had anything to do with its erection, we might expect to find indications of individual and peculiar feelings, which it would be most interesting to follow out. But this is no part of our present task; at some future period we hope to give a series of essays on the habitations of the most distinguished men of Europe, showing how the alterations which they directed, and the expression which they bestowed, corresponded with the turn of their emotions, and leading intellectual faculties: but at present we have to deal only with generalities; we have to ascertain not what will be pleasing to a single mind, but what will afford gratification to every eye possessing a certain degree of experience, and every mind endowed with a certain degree of taste.
103. Without further preface, therefore, let us endeavor to ascertain what would be theoretically beautiful, on the sh.o.r.e, or among the scenery of the Larian Lake, preparatory to a sketch of the general features of those villas which exist there, in too great a mult.i.tude to admit, on our part, of much individual detail.
For the general tone of the scenery, we may refer to the paper on the Italian cottage; for the sh.o.r.es of the Lake of Como have generally the character there described, with a little more cheerfulness, and a little less elevation,[14] but aided by great variety of form. They are not quite so rich in vegetation as the plains: both because the soil is scanty, there being, of course, no decomposition going on among the rocks of black marble which form the greater part of the sh.o.r.e; and because the mountains rise steeply from the water, leaving only a narrow zone at their bases in the climate of Italy. In that zone, however, the olive grows in great luxuriance, with the cypress, orange, aloe, myrtle, and vine, the latter always trellised.
[Footnote 14: That Italian mountain scenery has less elevation of character than the plains may appear singular; but there are many simple reasons for a fact which, we doubt not, has been felt by every one (capable of feeling anything), who ever left the Alps to pa.s.s into Lombardy. The first is, that a mountain scene, as we saw in the last paper, bears no traces of decay, since it never possessed any of life.
The desolation of the sterile peaks, never having been interrupted, is altogether free from the melancholy which is consequent on the pa.s.sing away of interruption. They stood up in the time of Italy's glory, into the voiceless air, while all the life and light which she remembers now was working and moving at their feet, an animated cloud, which they did not feel, and do not miss. That region of life never reached up their flanks, and has left them no memorials of its being; they have no a.s.sociations, no monuments, no memories; we look on them as we would on other hills; things of abstract and natural magnificence, which the presence of man could not increase, nor his departure sadden. They are, in consequence, dest.i.tute of all that renders the name of Ausonia thrilling, or her champaigns beautiful, beyond the mere splendor of climate; and even that splendor is unshared by the mountain; its cold atmosphere being undistinguished by any of that rich, purple, ethereal transparency which gives the air of the plains its _depth of feeling_,--we can find no better expression.