The Emhellishment of Dwellings. 441 



innocence, cheerfulness and contentment. If we observe the 

 same in a face, as in that of a simple-minded and intelligent- 

 looking old person, this face, if skilfully represented on 

 canvas, would become a favorite painting. Anything that 

 suggests the idea of similar qualities in the style or the decora- 

 tions of a cottage, renders it a favorite subject for the artist. 

 These are some of the qualities of the picturesque. Beauty 

 would serve to heighten its effect just so far as it harmonizes 

 with it ; as a beautiful face would render a young peasant 

 girl still more interesting in her rustic garb. Though the 

 picturesque and the beautiful are distinct qualities, they may 

 in certain ways and proportions be united in the same object 

 or scene. The peasant girl in her rustic garb is the more 

 picturesque on account of her beautiful face ; but were she 

 to add to her garb some of the elegant ornaments of fashion, 

 she would be grotesque and ridiculous. 



The picturesque character of any building is that quality 

 belonging to it, or connected with it, which excites in the 

 mind an agreeable sentiment or emotion, independently of its 

 intrinsic beauty. Such is an apparent adaptedness to pleas- 

 ant rural retirement and domestic peace and comfort. A 

 plain cottage, overgrown with vines and creeping plants, 

 suggesting that the inmates are humble people, endowed with 

 a love for the beauties of nature, and uncorrupted by any 

 foolish ambition, has an expression that renders it a pleasing 

 object for a cultivated mind to behold and contemplate. But 

 it is not necessary that a cottage should be reduced to such a 

 state of rudeness as to make it evidently the habitation of 

 rustics. Rusticity is a picturesque quality ; and it is this 

 idea that possesses the minds of certain improvers when they 

 rather absurdly build a fence of rough rails around a highly 

 ornamented villa. In this case, the contrast is too striking to 

 produce a good effect. There are other expressions which 

 are sufficiently rural, without rudeness or rusticity. It is a 

 still greater error to suppose that a cottage should be a miser- 

 able hovel to be picturesque. Any quality which is sug- 

 gestive of squalid wretchedness, or any kind of discomfort, 

 injures this expression. But any appearance that is suggestive 



TOL. XIX. NO. X. 56 



