of fifteenth-century
architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind
the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, _Il.
n'est. rose. sans. epine_; it has also only a ground floor and two
storeys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and
with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings,
the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiae. The idea
that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of
modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be
historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life.

I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and
built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within
and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and
manner, I will say presently, under another head;[164] but, at all
events, with such differences as might suit and express each man's
character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the
house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected
by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left
in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its
experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and
developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom
which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the
Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to
build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as may
well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the
front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend
from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier:--

Mit herzlichem Vertrauen
Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi
Dieses Haus bauen lassen.
Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren
Vor allem Unglueck und Gefahren,
Und es in Segen lassen stehn
Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit
Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese,
Wo alle Frommen wohnen,
Da wird Gott sie belohnen
Mil der Friedenskrone
Zu alle Ewigkeit.[165]

In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more
definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,--I use
the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to
classical,--that it admits of a richness of record a