n the
cave of the 'man named Contemplation.'

Sir Walter's monument will have one great merit, regarded as a piece
of art. It will be entirely an original,--such a piece of architecture
as he himself would have delighted to describe, and the description of
which he, and he only, could have sublimed into poetry. There is a
chaste and noble beauty in the forms of Greek and Roman architecture
which consorts well with the classic literature of those countries.
The compositions of Sir Walter, on the contrary, resemble what he so
much loved to describe--the rich and fantastic Gothic, at times
ludicrously uncouth, at times exquisitely beautiful. There are not
finer passages in all his writings than some of his architectural
descriptions. How exquisite is his _Melrose Abbey_,--the external view
in the cold, pale moonshine,

'When buttress and buttress alternately
Seemed formed of ebon and ivory;'

internally, when the strange light broke from the wizard's tomb! Who,
like Sir Walter, could draw a mullioned window, with its 'foliaged
tracery,' its 'freakish knots,' its pointed and moulded arch, and its
dyed and pictured panes? We passed, of late, an hour amid the ruins of
Crichton, and scarce knew whether most to admire the fine old castle
itself, so worthy of its poet, or the exquisite picture of it we found
in _Marmion_.

Sir Walter's monument would be a monument without character, if it
were other than Gothic. Still, however, we have our fears for the
effect. In portrait-painting there is the full life-size, and a size
much smaller, and both suit nearly equally well, and appear equally
natural; but the intermediate sizes do not suit. Make the portrait
just a very little less than the natural size, and it seems not the
reduced portrait of a man, but the full-sized portrait of a dwarf. Now
a similar principle seems to obtain in Gothic architecture.

The same design which strikes as beautiful in a model--the piece
which, if executed in spar, and with a glass cover over it, would be
regarded as exquisitely tasteful--would impress, when executed on a
large scale, as grand and magnificent in the first degree. And yet
this identical design, in an intermediate size, would possibly enough
be pronounced a failure. Mediocrity in size is fatal to the Gothic, if
it be a richly ornamented Gothic; nor are we sure that the noble
design of Mr. Kemp is to be executed on a scale sufficiently extended.
We are rather afraid not, bu