e villa, in whom it is unnatural, and
therefore injurious in its effect. The narrow cottage on the desolate
moor, or the stalwart hospice on the crest of the Alps, each leaves an
ennobling impression of energy and endurance; but the possessor of the
villa should call, not upon our admiration, but upon our sympathy; and
his function is to deepen the impression of the beauty and the fullness
of creation, not to exhibit the majesty of man; to show, in the
intercourse of earth and her children, not how her severity may be
mocked by their heroism, but how her bounty may be honored in their
enjoyment.

[Footnote 45: For instance, one proprietor terrifies the landscape all
round him, within a range of three miles, by the conspicuous position of
his habitation; and is punished by finding that, from whatever quarter
the wind may blow, it sends in some of his plate-glass. Another spoils a
pretty bit of crag by building below it, and has two or three tons of
stone dropped through his roof, the first frosty night. Another occupies
the turfy slope of some soft lake promontory, and has his cook washed
away by the first flood. We do not remember ever having seen a
dwelling-house destroying the effect of a landscape, of which,
considered merely as a habitation, we should wish to be the possessor.]

[Footnote 46: We are not thinking of the effect upon the human frame of
the air which is favorable to vegetation. Chemically considered, the
bracing breeze of the more sterile soil is the most conducive to health,
and is practically so, when the frame is not perpetually exposed to it;
but the keenness which checks the growth of the plant is, in all
probability, trying, to say the least, to the constitution of a
resident.]

[Footnote 47: We hope the English language may long retain this corrupt
but energetic superlative.]

219. This position, being once granted, will save us a great deal of
trouble; for it will put out of our way, as totally unfit for villa
residence, nine-tenths of all mountain scenery; beginning with such
bleak and stormy bits of hillside as that which was metamorphosed into
something like a forest by the author of "Waverley;" laying an equal
veto on all the severe landscapes of such districts of minor mountains
as the Scotch Highlands and North Wales; and finishing by setting aside
all the higher sublimity of Alp and Apennine. What, then, has it left
us? The gentle slope of the lake shore, and the spreading parts of th