echanical power, varies
with its form (as mountain or plain), with its substance (in soil or
mineral contents), and with its climate. All these conditions of
intrinsic value must be known and complied with by the men who have to
deal with it, in order to give effectual value; but at any given time
and place, the intrinsic value is fixed: such and such a piece of land,
with its associated lakes and seas, rightly treated in surface and
substance, can produce precisely so much food and power, and no more.

The second element of value in land being its beauty, united with such
conditions of space and form as are necessary for exercise, and for
fullness of animal life, land of the highest value in these respects
will be that lying in temperate climates, and boldly varied in form;
removed from unhealthy or dangerous influences (as of miasm or volcano);
and capable of sustaining a rich fauna and flora. Such land, carefully
tended by the hand of man, so far as to remove from it unsightlinesses
and evidences of decay, guarded from violence, and inhabited, under
man's affectionate protection, by every kind of living creature that can
occupy it in peace, is the most precious "property" that human beings
can possess.

17. (ii.) Buildings, furniture, and instruments.

The value of buildings consists, first, in permanent strength, with
convenience of form, of size, and of position; so as to render
employment peaceful, social intercourse easy, temperature and air
healthy. The advisable or possible magnitude of cities and mode of their
distribution in squares, streets, courts, &c.; the relative value of
sites of land, and the modes of structure which are healthiest and most
permanent, have to be studied under this head.

The value of buildings consists secondly in historical association, and
architectural beauty, of which we have to examine the influence on
manners and life.

The value of instruments consists, first, in their power of shortening
labour, or otherwise accomplishing what human strength unaided could
not. The kinds of work which are severally best accomplished by hand or
by machine;--the effect of machinery in gathering and multiplying
population, and its influence on the minds and bodies of such
population; together with the conceivable uses of machinery on a
colossal scale in accomplishing mighty and useful works, hitherto
unthought of, such as the deepening of large river channels;--changing
the surface of mountai