battlements cresting their undulations; some wide majestic river gliding
along the champaign, the bridge on its breast, and the city on its
shore; the whole canopied with cloudless azure, basking in mistless
sunshine, breathing the silence of odoriferous air.

27. Now comes the question. In a country of this pomp of natural glory,
tempered with melancholy memory of departed pride, what are we to wish
for, what are we naturally to expect in the character of her most humble
edifices; those which are most connected with present life--least with
the past? what are we to consider fitting or beautiful in her cottage?

We do not expect it to be comfortable, when everything around it
betokens decay and desolation in the works of man. We do not wish it to
be neat, where nature is most beautiful, because neglected. But we
naturally look for an elevation of character, a richness of design or
form, which, while the building is kept a cottage, may yet give it a
peculiar air of cottage aristocracy; a beauty (no matter how
dilapidated) which may appear to have been once fitted for the
surrounding splendor of scene and climate. Now, let us fancy an Italian
cottage before us. The reader who has traveled in Italy will find little
difficulty in recalling one to his memory, with its broad lines of light
and shadow, and its strange, but not unpleasing mixture of grandeur and
desolation. Let us examine its details, enumerate its architectural
peculiarities, and see how far it agrees with our preconceived idea of
what the cottage ought to be?

28. The first remarkable point of the building is the roof. It generally
consists of tiles of very deep curvature, which rib it into distinct
vertical lines, giving it a far more agreeable surface than that of our
flatter tiling. The _form_ of the roof, however, is always excessively