Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/118

bered which others will not, or cannot, perform or experience; and we know that all men can enjoy recreation as much as ourselves. We wish succeeding generations to admire our energy, but not even to be aware of our lassitude; to know when we moved, but not when we rested; how we ruled, not how we condescended: and, therefore, in the case of the triumphal arch, or the hereditary palace, if we are the builders, we desire stability; if the beholders, we are offended with novelty: but, in the case of the villa, the builder desires only a correspondence with his humour; the beholder, evidence of such correspondence; for he feels that the villa is most beautiful when it ministers most to pleasure; that it cannot minister to pleasure without perpetual change, so as to suit the varying ideas, and humours, and imaginations of its inhabitant; and that it cannot possess this light and variable habit with any appearance of antiquity. And, for a yet more important reason, such appearance is not desirable. Melancholy, when it is productive of pleasure, is accompanied either by loveliness in the object exciting it, or by a feeling of pride in the mind experiencing it. Without one of these, it becomes absolute pain, which all men throw off as soon as they can, and suffer under as long as their minds are too weak for the effort. Now, when it is accompanied by loveliness in the object exciting it, it forms beauty; when by a feeling of pride, it constitutes the pleasure we experience in tragedy, when we have the pride of endurance, or in contemplating the ruin, or the monument, by which