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whether plain or ornamented, are highly 

 injurious to the proposed effect ; and more 

 so in abridge, than in any other building. 

 Perhaps no building of equal solidity, has so 

 light an appearance as a light stone bridge; 

 and that I imagine is owing to the small, 

 proportion of what is closed up, compared 

 with what is open; to the form of the open- 

 ings ; and to the peculiarity of situation, 

 from whiejx a bridge seems, as it were, to 

 pass from one side of a river to the 

 other, with something analogous to mo- 

 tion : and this method of considering such 

 objects, though it may appear fantastic, 

 will, J believe, lead t° very JVM princi- 

 ples. 



Whatever gives the idea of easy and 

 rapid motion, gives in the same propor- 

 tion that of lightness ; and, on the other 

 hand, whatever impresses the idea of resis- 

 tance to motion, in the same proportion 

 also, impresses that of massiveness.* It is 



* All the circumstances of lightness, and of massiveness, 

 together with its resistance to motion, are finely opposed to 

 each other in Milton's battle of the Angels : 



