116 



ARCHITECTURE. 



BOOK I. 



pressly for the purpose of producing variety. This being the 

 case, the mind is much more fastidious about these forms and 

 variations, than if their uses were less known or more diversi- 

 fied. If variety be produced by giving the central window of 

 a plaiirfront, or those of the two extremities, a round top ; or if 

 there be projections, the windows in each of them may some- 

 times deviate from the central form, and assume perhaps the 

 Venetian shape, without offending. But if round topped or 

 Venetian shapes were alternately introduced among the com- 

 mon forms, the incongruity would at once be felt by every 

 spectator. Still, however, this is Grecian architecture. Imagine 

 the operation carried on further, and every second circular 

 topped window made pointed in the Gothic manner, and cer- 

 tainly nothing can be more ridiculously incongruous. 



It is not meant to be insinuated, that this has actually been 

 done in every case; it is only intended to explain, to those who 

 have not reflected on harmony in buildings, how the mixtures 

 of Grecian and Gothic which we see in numbers of buildings 

 must affect men of taste. In some of these buildings the win- 

 dows are mixed much in the style mentioned above*; in 

 others, the incongruities extend chiefly to the general masses. 

 Thus in some places the Grecian proportions have been given 



* As, in Aivt.hr.ie Castle, 



