ry, we need
never be afraid of the distant.

[Footnote 49: This is rather a bold assertion; and we should be sorry to
maintain the fact as universal; but the crystals of _almost_ all the
rarer minerals are larger in the larger mountain; and that altogether
independently of the period of elevation, which, in the case of Mont
Blanc, is later than that of our own Mendips.]

225. For these reasons, the cottage villa, rather than the mansion, is
to be preferred among our hills: it has been preferred in many
instances, and in too many, with an unfortunate result; for the cottage
villa is precisely that which affords the greatest scope for practical
absurdity. Symmetry, proportion, and some degree of simplicity, are
usually kept in view in the large building; but, in the smaller, the
architect considers himself licensed to try all sorts of experiments,
and jumbles together pieces of imitation, taken at random from his
note-book, as carelessly as a bad chemist mixing elements, from which he
may by accident obtain something new, though the chances are ten to one
that he obtains something useless. The chemist, however, is more
innocent than the architect; for the one throws his trash out of the
window, if the compound fail; while the other always thinks his conceit
too good to be lost. The great one cause of all the errors in this
branch of architecture is, the principle of imitation, at once the most
baneful and the most unintellectual, yet perhaps the most natural, that
the human mind can encourage or act upon.[50] Let it once be thoroughly
rooted out, and the cottage villa will become a beautiful and
interesting element of our landscape.

[Footnote 50: In Sec. 166 we noticed the kind of error most common in
amateur designs, and we traced that error to its great first cause, the
assumption of the humor, instead of the true character, for a guide; but
we did not sufficiently specify the mode in which that first cause
operated, by prompting to imitation. By imitation we do not mean
accurate copying, neither do we mean working under the influence of the
feelings by which we may suppose the originators of a given model to
have been actuated; but we mean the intermediate step of endeavoring to
combine old materials in a novel manner. True copying may be disdained
by architects, but it should not be disdained by nations; for when the
feelings of the time in which certain styles had their origin have
passed away, any examples of th