desirable. Melancholy, when it is productive of pleasure, is accompanied
either by loveliness in the object exciting it, or by a feeling of pride
in the mind experiencing it. Without one of these, it becomes absolute
pain, which all men throw off as soon as they can, and suffer under as
long as their minds are too weak for the effort. Now, when it is
accompanied by loveliness in the object exciting it, it forms beauty;
when by a feeling of pride, it constitutes the pleasure we experience in
tragedy, when we have the pride of endurance, or in contemplating the
ruin, or the monument, by which we are informed or reminded of the pride
of the past. Hence, it appears that age is beautiful only when it is the
decay of glory or of power, and memory only delightful when it reposes
upon pride.[19] All remains therefore of what was merely devoted to
pleasure; all evidence of lost enjoyment; all memorials of the
recreation and rest of the departed; in a word, all desolation of
delight is productive of mere pain, for there is no feeling of
exultation connected with it. Thus, in any ancient habitation, we pass
with reverence and pleasurable emotion through the ordered armory, where
the lances lie, with none to wield; through the lofty hall, where the
crested scutcheons glow with the honor of the dead: but we turn sickly
away from the arbor which has no hand to tend it, and the boudoir which
has no life to lighten it, and the smooth sward which has no light feet
to dance on it. So it is in the villa: the more memory, the more sorrow;
and, therefore, the less adaptation to its present purpose. But, though
cheerful, it should be ethereal in its expression: "spiritual" is a good
word, giving ideas of the very highest order of delight that can be
obtained in the mere present.

[Footnote 19: Observe, we are not speaking of emotions felt on
remembering what we ourselves have enjoyed, for then the imagination is
productive of pleasure by replacing us in enjoyment, but of the feelings
excited in the _indifferent_ spectator, by the evident decay of power or
desolation of enjoyment, of which the first ennobles, the other only
harrows, the spirit.]

120. It seems, then, that for all these reasons an appearance of age is
not desirable, far less necessary, in the villa; but its existing
character must be in unison with its country; and it must appear to be
inhabited by one brought up in that country, and imbued with its
national feelings. In It