with a stout roof sustained on
corner posts, or in an inclosure of four walls without a roof at
all,--and you will quickly see how important a part of the cottage the
roof must always be to the mind as well as to the eye, and how, from
seeing it, the greatest part of our pleasure must continually arise.

17. Now, do you suppose that which is so all-important in a cottage, can
be of small importance in your own dwelling-house? Do you think that by
any splendor of architecture--any height of stories--you can atone to
the mind for the loss of the aspect of the roof? It is vain to say you
take the roof for granted. You may as well say you take a man's kindness
for granted, though he neither looks nor speaks kindly. You may know him
to be kind in reality, but you will not like him so well as if he spoke
and looked kindly also. And whatever external splendor you may give your
houses, you will always feel there is something wanting, unless you see
their roofs plainly. And this especially in the north. In southern
architecture the roof is of far less importance; but here the soul of
domestic building is in the largeness and conspicuousness of the
protection against the ponderous snow and driving sleet. You may make
the facade of the square pile, if the roof be not seen, as handsome as
you please,--you may cover it with decoration,--but there will always be
a heartlessness about it, which you will not know how to conquer; above
all, a perpetual difficulty in finishing the wall at top, which will
require all kinds of strange inventions in parapets and pinnacles for
its decoration, and yet will never look right.

Now, I need not tell you that, as it is desirable, for the sake of the
effect upon the mind, that the roof should be visible, so the best and
most natural form of roof in the north is that which will render it
_most_ visible, namely, the steep gable: the best and most natural, I
say, because this form not only throws off snow and rain most
completely, and dries fastest, but obtains the greatest interior space
within walls of a given height, removes the heat of the sun most
effectually from the upper rooms, and affords most space for
ventilation.

18. You have then, observed, two great principles, as far as northern
architecture is concerned; first, that the pointed arch is to be the
means by which the weight of the wall or roof is to be sustained;
secondly, that the steep gable is the form most proper for the roof
itse