imagine
it must be capable of the same feelings, and possess the same faculties,
and, above all others, memory: it is always telling us about the past,
never pointing to the future; we appeal to it, as to a thing which has
seen and felt during a life similar to our own, though of ten times its
duration, and therefore receive from it a perpetual impression of
antiquity. So again a ruined town gives us an impression of antiquity;
the stones of which it is built, none; for their age is not written upon
them.

87. This being the case, it is evident that the chief feeling induced by
woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet
melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced
by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of
the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their
entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole
character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling.
The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to
his species.

88. Now, this feeling of mixed melancholy and veneration is the one of
all others which the modern cottage must not be allowed to violate. It
may be fantastic or rich in detail; for the one character will make it
look old-fashioned, and the other will assimilate with the intertwining
of leaf and bough around it: but it must not be spruce, or natty, or
very bright in color; and the older it looks the better.

A little grotesqueness in form is the more allowable, because the
imagination is naturally active in the obscure and indefinite daylight
of wood scenery; conjures up innumerable beings, of every size and
shape, to people its alleys and smile through its thickets; and is by no
means displeased to find some of its inventions half-realized in a
decorated panel or grinning extremity of a rafter.

89. These characters being kept in view, as objects to be attained, the
remaining considerations are technical.

For the form. Select any well-grown group of the tree which prevails
most near the proposed site of the cottage. Its summit will be a rounded
mass. Take the three principal points of its curve: namely, its apex and
the two points where it unites itself with neighboring masses. Strike a
circle through these three points; and the angle contained in the
segment cut off by a line joining the two lower points is to be the
angle of the cottage roof. (Of c