142. During the course of this last summer I have been myself very
directly interested in some of the quite elementary processes of true
architecture. I have been building a little pier into Coniston Lake,
and various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which
had to be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the
dextrous hands of a neighbour farmer's son, the pier projected, and the
walls rose, as if enchanted; every stone taking its proper place, and
the loose dyke holding itself as firmly upright as if the gripping
cement of the Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better
acquaintance with the laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me,
myself, to build six inches of dyke that would stand; and all the
decoration possible under the circumstances consisted in turning the
lichened sides of the stones outwards. And yet the noblest conditions
of building in the world are nothing more than the gradual adornment,
by play of the imagination, of materials first arranged by this natural
instinct of adjustment. You must not lose sight of the instinct of
building, but you must not think the play of the imagination depends
upon it.
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