that thus it is in the
power of worms to conceal, to destroy, or to violate, what angels could
not restore, create or consecrate; and that the right, which every man
unquestionably possesses, to be an ass, is extended only, in public, to
those who are innocent in idiotism, not to the more malicious clowns,
who thrust their degraded motley conspicuously forth amidst the fair
colors of earth, and mix their incoherent cries with the melodies of
eternity, break with their inane laugh upon the silence which Creation
keeps where Omnipotence passes most visibly, and scrabble over with the
characters of idiocy the pages that have been written by the finger of
God.

175. These feelings we would endeavor to impress upon all persons likely
to have anything to do with embellishing, as it is called, fine natural
scenery; as they might, in some degree, convince both the architect and
his employer of the danger of giving free play to the imagination in
cases involving intricate questions of feeling and composition, and
might persuade the designer of the necessity of looking, not to his own
acre of land, or to his own peculiar tastes, but to the whole mass of
forms and combination of impressions with which he is surrounded.

176. Let us suppose, however, that the design is yielded entirely to the
architect's discretion. Being a piece of domestic architecture, the
chief object in its exterior design will be to arouse domestic feelings,
which, as we saw before, it will do most distinctly by corresponding
with the first part of character. Yet it is still more necessary that it
should correspond with its situation; and hence arises another
difficulty, the reconciliation of correspondence with contraries; for
such, it is deeply to be regretted, are too often the individual's mind,
and the dwelling-place it chooses. The polished courtier brings his
refinement and duplicity with him to ape the Arcadian rustic in
Devonshire; the romantic rhymer takes a plastered habitation, with one
back window looking into the Green Park; the soft votary of luxury
endeavors to rise at seven, in some Ultima Thule of frosts and storms;
and the rich stock-jobber calculates his percentages among the soft
dingles and woody shores of Westmoreland. When the architect finds this
to be the case, he must, of course, content himself with suiting his
design to such a mind as ought to be where the intruder's is; for the
feelings which are so much at variance with themsel