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The Poetry of Architecture by John Ruskin
page 58 of 194 (29%)
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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