rtune, the building will possess the cheerfulness,
without losing the tranquillity, and will seem to have been erected, and
to be inhabited, by a mind of that beautiful temperament wherein modesty
tempers majesty, and gentleness mingles with rejoicing, which, above all
others, is most suited to the essence, and most interwoven with the
spirit, of the natural beauty whose peculiar power is invariably repose.

125. So much for its general character. Considered by principles of
composition, it will also be found beautiful. Its prevailing lines are
horizontal; and every artist knows that, where peaks of any kind are in
sight, the lines above which they rise ought to be flat. It has not one
acute angle in all its details, and very few intersections of verticals
with horizontals; while all that do intersect seem useful as supporting
the mass. The just application of the statues at the top is more
doubtful, and is considered reprehensible by several high authorities,
who, nevertheless, are inconsistent enough to let the balustrade pass
uncalumniated, though it is objectionable on exactly the same grounds;
for, if the statues suggest the inquiry of "What are they doing there?"
the balustrade compels its beholder to ask, "whom it keeps from tumbling
over?"

126. The truth is, that the balustrade and statues derive their origin
from a period when there was easy access to the roof of either temple or
villa; (that there was such access is proved by a passage in the
_Iphigenia Taurica_, line 113, where Orestes speaks of getting up to the
triglyphs of a Doric temple as an easy matter;) and when the flat roofs
were used, not, perhaps, as an evening promenade, as in Palestine, but
as a place of observation, and occasionally of defense. They were
composed of large flat slabs of stone ([Greek: keramos,[20]]) peculiarly
adapted for walking, one or two of which, when taken up, left an opening
of easy access into the house, as in Luke v. 19, and were perpetually
used in Greece as missile weapons, in the event of a hostile attack or
sedition in the city, by parties of old men, women, and children, who
used, as a matter of course, to retire to the roof as a place of
convenient defense. By such attacks from the roof with the [Greek:
keramos] the Thebans were thrown into confusion in Plataea (_Thucydides_
ii. 4.). So, also, we find the roof immediately resorted to in the case
of the starving of Pausanias in the Temple of Minerva of the Brazen