I. ARCHITECTURE 15

central chain of the St. Gothard Alps: and yet, as you go out of the gates, and walk in the suburban streets of that city-I mean Verona-the eye never seeks to rest on that external scenery, however gorgeous; it does not look for the gaps between the houses, as you do here; it may for a few moments follow the broken line of the great Alpine battlements; but it is only where they form a background for other battlements, built by the hand of man. There is no necessity felt to dwell on the blue river or the burning hills. The heart and eye have enough to do in the streets of the city itself; they are contented there; nay, they sometimes turn from the natural scenery, as if too savage and solitary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the palace walls that cast their shade upon the streets, and the crowd of towers that rise out of that shadow into the depth of the sky.¹

2. That is a city to be proud of, indeed; and it is this kind of architectural dignity which you should aim at, in what you add to Edinburgh or rebuild in it. For remember, you must either help your scenery or destroy it; whatever you do has an effect of one kind or the other; it is never indifferent. But, above all, remember that it is chiefly by private, not by public, effort that your city must be

¹ [Ruskin here begins to fulfil the intentions he had formed, when at Verona in 1851 and 1852, to celebrate in fitting language the city which he loved so intensely. On revisiting it in 1851 he writes to his father:-

“(August 30.)-Verona looks lovelier than ever, or nobler is a better word. Every time I come it makes a most profound impression on me, and I long more and more to have Hunt or Millais, or some such patiently imitative man, to paint me the whole city brick by brick. ... One of the strangest things to me is its continual newness; it is only eighteen months since I was here, yet I feel as if my mind had advanced, and as if every scene had now another story to tell me, so that I should like to go over the whole town again, and again examine every ornament. I should never, never have done.”

“(September 1.)-... Certainly Verona is the finest thing in Italy for general sentiment. Venice is grander and richer, but not so pure in feeling or so lovely in grouping. May it long be spared! I tremble at every fissure in the walls, and fancy them wider and wider every year.”

So, again, on returning in the following spring he finds Verona “more and more lovely every time” (June 2), and says (June 4), “if I can put any of my impressions of Verona into good language, they will be worth reading.” He made many such attempts; see e.g., Verona and its Rivers, A Joy for Ever, § 76, and Fors Clavigera, Letter 84; for other references, see General Index.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]