solitude, which is only the absence of life, be felt without some
contrast. Accordingly, it is, perhaps, never so perfect as when a
populous and highly cultivated plain, immediately beneath, is visible
through the rugged ravines, or over the cloudy summits of some tall,
vast, and voiceless mountain.

48. When such a prospect is not attainable, one of the chief uses of the
mountain cottage, paradoxical as the idea may appear, is to increase
this sense of solitude. Now, as it will only do so when it is seen at a
considerable distance, it is necessary that it should be visible, or, at
least, that its presence should be indicated, over a considerable
portion of surrounding space. It must not, therefore, be too much shaded
by trees, or it will be useless; but if, on the contrary, it be too
conspicuous on the open hillside, it will be liable to most of the
objections which were advanced against the Swiss cottage, and to
another, which was not then noticed. Anything which, to the eye, is
split into parts, appears less as a whole than what is undivided. Now, a
considerable mass, of whatever tone or color it may consist, is as
easily divisible by dots as by lines; that is, a conspicuous point, on
any part of its surface, will divide it into two portions, each of which
will be individually measured by the eye, but which will never make the
impression which they would have made, had their unity not been
interrupted. A conspicuous cottage on a distant mountain side has this
effect in a fatal degree, and is, therefore, always intolerable.

49. It should accordingly, in order to reconcile the attainment of the
good, with the avoidance of the evil, be barely visible: it should not
tell as a cottage on the eye, though it should on the mind; for be it
observed that, if it is only by the closest investigation that we can
ascertain it to be a human habitation, it will answer the purpose of