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to the effect of buildings, cannot be to- 

 tally foreign to his art ; and as there are 

 scenes which call for a style of architec- 

 ture similar to that of the Roman or 

 Florentine, so there are others, to which 

 that of the Venetian school is no less a- 

 dapted. 



I have already considered the general 

 causes of grandeur and beauty. As mas- 

 siveness and solidity belong to the former, 

 so lightness, and detached parts no less be- 

 long to the latter : what is light, in both 

 senses of the word, accords with ideas of 

 beauty, and particularly with those of gaiety, 

 and splendour. We often say of a building 

 that it is light and airy, when the air appears 

 to have a free passage round the parts of it; 

 an idea which peculiarly applies to open 

 colonnades. All these effects are increased, 

 if the colour of the stone also, be light and 

 clear. 



If we attend to the practice of the Vene- 

 tian painters in these points, we shall find 

 how fond they were of introducing open 

 porticos and colonnades, and of displaying 



