whole: it must not even be seen all at once; and he who sees one end should feel that, from the given data, he can arrive at no conclusion respecting the other, yet be impressed with a feeling of a universal energy, pervading with its beauty of unanimity all life and all inanimation, all forms of stillness or motion, all presence of silence or of sound.
Thus, then, we have reviewed the most interesting examples of existing villa architecture, and we have applied the principles derived from those examples to the landscape of our own country. Throughout, we have endeavoured to direct attention to the spirit, rather than to the letter, of all law, and to exhibit the beauty of that principle which is embodied in the line with which we have headed this concluding paper; of being satisfied with national and natural forms, and not endeavouring to introduce the imaginations, or imitate the customs, of foreign nations, or of former times. All imitation has its origin in vanity, and vanity is the bane of architecture. And, as we take leave of them, we would, once for all, remind our English sons of Sempronius "qui villas attollunt marmore novas," novas in the full sense of the word, and who are setting all English feeling and all natural principles at defiance, that it is only the bourgeois gentilhomme who will wear his dressing-gown upside down, "parceque toutes les personnes de qualité portent les fleurs en en-bas."
Oxford, October, 1838.
