it-painter puts on the
shoulders and off the necks of his savage or insane customers, never can
make the 'prentice look military, or the idiot poetical; and the
architectural appurtenances of Norman embrasure or Veronaic balcony must
be equally ineffective, until they can turn shopkeepers into barons, and
schoolgirls into Juliets. Let the national mind be elevated in its
character, and it will naturally become pure in its conceptions; let it
be simple in its desires, and it will be beautiful in its ideas; let it
be modest in feeling, and it will not be insolent in stone. For
architect and for employer, there can be but one rule; to be natural in
all that they do, and to look for the beauty of the material creation as
they would for that of the human form, not in the chanceful and changing
disposition of artificial decoration, but in the manifestation of the
pure and animating spirit which keeps it from the coldness of the grave.
[With this remarkable foreshadowing of Mr. Ruskin's Art-teaching compare
_Seven Lamps_ and _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_,
throughout.]]

226. So much for size. The question of position need not detain us long,
as the principles advanced in Sec. 104 are true generally, with one
exception. Beautiful and calm the situation must always be, but--in
England--not conspicuous. In Italy, the dwelling of the descendants of
those whose former life has bestowed on every scene the greater part of
the majesty which it possesses, ought to have a dignity inherent in it,
which would be shamed by shrinking back from the sight of men, and
majesty enough to prevent such non-retirement from becoming intrusive;
but the spirit of the English landscape is simple, and pastoral and
mild, devoid, also, of high associations (for in the Highlands and Wales
almost every spot which has the pride of memory is unfit for villa
residence); and, therefore, all conspicuous appearance of its more
wealthy inhabitants becomes ostentation, not dignity; impudence, not
condescension. Their dwellings ought to be just evident, and no more, as
forming part of the gentle animation and present prosperity which is the
beauty of cultivated ground. And this partial concealment may be
effected without any sacrifice of the prospect which the proprietor will
insist upon commanding from his windows, and with great accession to his
permanent enjoyment.

227. For, first, the only prospect which is really desirable or
delightful, is that fr