ntroduced by using different curves; joining parabolas
with cycloids, etc.; but the use of curves is always the best mode of
obtaining good forms.[55]

[Footnote 55: [Compare _Modern Painters_, vol. IV. chap. xvii. Sec. 49, and
_Elements of Drawing_, Letter III.]]

Further ease may be obtained by added combinations. For instance, strike
another curve (_a q b_) through the flat line _a b_; bisect the maximum
_v p_, draw the horizontal _r s_, (observing to make the largest maximum
of this curve towards the smallest maximum of the great curve, to
restore the balance), join _r q_, _s b_, and we have another
modification of the same beautiful form. This may be done in either side
of the building, but not in both.

245. Then, if the flat roof be still found monotonous, it may be
interrupted by garret windows, which must not be gabled, but turned with
the curve _a b_, whatever that may be. This will give instant humility
to the building, and take away any vestiges of Italian character which
might hang about it, and which would be wholly out of place.

The windows may have tolerably broad architraves, but no cornices; an
ornament both haughty and classical in its effect, and, on both
accounts, improper here. They should be in level lines, but grouped at
unequal distances, or they will have a formal and artificial air,
unsuited to the irregularity and freedom around them. Some few of them
may be arched, however, with the curve _a b_, the mingling of the curve
and the square being very graceful. There should not be more than two
tiers and the garrets, or the building will be too high.

So much for the general outline of the villa, in which we are to work by
contrast. Let us pass over to that in which we are to work by
assimilation, before speaking of the material and color which should be
common to both.

246. The grand outline must be designed on exactly the same principles;
for the curvilinear proportions, which were opposition before, will now
be assimilation. Of course, we do not mean to say that every villa in a
hill country should have the form _a b c d_; we should be tired to death
if they had: but we bring forward that form as an example of the
agreeable result of the principles on which we should always work, but
whose result should be the same in no two cases. A modification of that
form, however, will frequently be found useful; for, under the
depression _h f_, we may have a hall of entrance and of exercise, whic