The Poetry of Architecture by John Ruskin
page 58 of 194 (29%)
page 58 of 194 (29%)
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building), which was not necessary, and looks out of place. He has
endeavored to build neatly too, and has bestowed a good deal of plaster on the outside, by all which circumstances the work is infinitely deteriorated. We have always disliked cylindrical chimneys, probably because they put us in mind of glasshouses and manufactories, for we are aware of no more definite reason; yet this example is endurable, and has a character about it which it would be a pity to lose. Sometimes when the square part is carried down the whole front of the cottage, it looks like the remains of some gray tower, and is not felt to be a chimney at all. Such deceptions are always very dangerous, though in this case sometimes attended with good effect, as in the old building called Coniston Hall, on the shores of Coniston Water, whose distant outline (Fig. 8) is rendered light and picturesque, by the size and shape of its chimneys, which are the same in character as Fig. _c_. [Illustration: FIG. 8. Coniston Hall, from the Lake near Brantwood (1837).] 70. Of English chimneys adapted for buildings of a more elevated character, we can adduce no good examples. The old red brick mass, which we see in some of our venerable manor-houses, has a great deal of English character about it, and is always agreeable, when the rest of the building is of brick. Fig. _p_ is a chimney of this kind: there is nothing remarkable in it; it is to be met with all over England; but we have placed it beside its neighbor _q_ to show how the same form and idea are modified by the mind of the nations who employ it. The design is the same in both, the proportions also; but the one is a chimney, the other a paltry model of a paltrier edifice. Fig. _q_ is Swiss, and is liable to all the objections advanced against the Swiss cottages; it is a despicable mimicry of a large building, like the tower in the |
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