52 
WALDEN. 
than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the 
soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of 
his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. 
He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man 
seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly 
whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really 
knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty 
I now see, I know has gradually grown from within 
outward, out of the necessities and character of the in¬ 
dweller, who is the only builder, — out of some un¬ 
conscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a 
thought for the appearance; and whatever additional 
beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be 
preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The 
most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter 
knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and 
cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the in¬ 
habitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiar¬ 
ity in their surfaces merely, which makes them pic¬ 
turesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen’s 
suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and 
as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as lit¬ 
tle straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A 
great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally 
hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like 
borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. 
They can do without architecture who have no olives 
nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were 
made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the 
architects of our bibles spent as much time about their 
cornices as the architects of our churches do ? So are 
made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their pro¬ 
fessors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few 
