hade, and in rare and
solitary instances; especially if the country be itself rich and
pleasing, and abound with grand forms. On the sides of bleak and
desolate moors, we are indeed thankful for the sight of white cottages
and white houses plentifully scattered, where, without these, perhaps
every thing would be cheerless: this is said, however, with hesitation,
and with a wilful sacrifice of some higher enjoyments. But I have
certainly seen such buildings glittering at sun-rise, and in wandering
lights, with no common pleasure. The continental traveller also will
remember, that the convents hanging from the rocks of the Rhine, the
Rhone, the Danube, or among the Appenines, or the mountains of Spain,
are not looked at with less complacency when, as is often the case, they
happen to be of a brilliant white. But this is perhaps owing, in no
small degree, to the contrast of that lively colour with the gloom of
monastic life, and to the general want of rural residences of smiling
and attractive appearance, in those countries.

The objections to white, as a colour, in large spots or masses in
landscape, especially in a mountainous country, are insurmountable. In
Nature, pure white is scarcely ever found but in small objects, such as
flowers: or in those which are transitory, as the clouds, foam of
rivers, and snow. Mr. Gilpin, who notices this, has also recorded the
just remark of Mr. Locke, of N----, that white destroys the _gradations_
of distance; and, therefore, an object of pure white can scarcely ever
be managed with good effect in landscape-painting. Five or six white
houses, scattered over a valley, by their obtrusiveness, dot the
surface, and divide it into triangles, or other mathematical figures,
haunting the eye, and disturbing that repose which might otherwise be
perfect. I have seen a single white house materially impair the majesty
of a mountain; cutting away, by a harsh separation, the whole of its
base, below the point on which the house stood. Thus was the apparent
size of the mountain reduced, not by the interposition of another object
in a manner to call forth the imagination, which will give more than the
eye loses; but what had been abstracted in this case was left visible;
and the mountain appeared to take its beginning, or to rise, from the
line of the house, instead of its own natural base. But, if I may
express my own individual feeling, it is after sunset, at the coming on
of twilight, that white o