Whittington village lies on the same road, and is about two miles from Oswestry. It is introduced here to illustrate the excellent effect of breadth in a landscape. A well-defined broad white gable stands out against the rest of the village and sets it off. Of course there is the advantage of fine trees behind it, but it stands back from the road, which is broader here, and affords them every chance of being seen. It is actually a fact, which few persons unacquainted with perspective would at first credit, that if the road continued at the same width, and if ordinary three-storied village houses were substituted, this beautiful scene would be completely closed out. We pass in English roads hundreds of pleasant prospects that we do not know of, as they are shut out by the dreary brick buildings that characterise the present century.
A comparatively small object may do an immense amount of mischief. We may, for example, be admirably placed in a theatre for seeing and hearing everything. The building may be crowded, but we see over a low-sized individual in front the whole of the scenery and the performers, when a hat, only six inches high, and about as broad, appears, and then “our revels all are ended,” and the actors have “melted into air—into thin air.”
This kind of teaching is especially wanted now among architects. It is not too much to say of the majority of them, that if they were required to build a church in some distant county, they would consider it quite sufficient to have a plan of the churchyard and adjoining lanes sent to them, without their having the least idea of the surrounding buildings or trees, or the outline of the neighbouring hills. Infinite pains are taken with details, but though books which treat of these are excellent and numerous, one turns in vain for any architectural work to guide him to a knowledge of what is more important—picturesqueness. Ruskin’s works are not as yet studied by architects as they should be; indeed they require a previous knowledge of, at any rate, the preliminary elements of art, which, to some extent, would limit their general acceptance in the profession. Still the number of his readers is increasing yearly among architects, much to the advantage of the country. Detail, however beautiful, and however necessary excellence in it may be, can no more improve a building that jars with its surroundings, than an elaborate label can cure a bottle of indifferent Rhenish wine.
There is a curious old book written by Sir Edward Moore to his son and heir, which shows how a landlord of the seventeenth century regarded the appearance of his street property. He was the principal lord of the manor of Liverpool, and at great length gives directions for the guidance of his heir. Speaking of one of the tenants, he says:—“This man should have built two dormer-windows, as the others did, but when he had got me fast, and he was loose, he would build none, but made the house like a barn, much to the disparagement of the street. If he have occasion to use you, deal not with him till he hath made two dormer windows.” Instances are unhappily the exception where such fastidious care is taken of the appearance of a street by the proprietor.
It may be mentioned incidentally that the gateway of Peveril’s castle is in Whittington village, which was also the birthplace of Sir Richard Whittington, three times Mayor of London.