CONSTRUCTION XIII. THE ROOF 187

to add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or palm is to the Southern, the spruce fir.¹ The eye which has once been habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of flat or massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of the poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think of the spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling with which the Northman would be inspired by the frost-work wreathed upon its glittering point, and the Italian by the dark green depth of sunshine on the broad table of the stone pine,* (and consider by the way whether the spruce fir be a more heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the Mediterranean isles).

§ 9. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each other, the steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted in, throughout the North; and then, with the gradual exaggeration with which every pleasant idea is pursued by the human mind, it is raised into all manner of peaks, and points, and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on its flanks, and the walls increased in height in proportion, until we get indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle of religious aspiration in it than a child’s tower of cards. What is more, the desire to build high is complicated with the peculiar love of the grotesque † which is characteristic of the North, together with especial delight in multiplication

* I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest scenery on the northern mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish gentleman, the other day, describing, together with his own, the regret which the peasants in his neighbourhood had testified for the loss of a noble stone pine, one of the grandest in Spain, which its proprietor had suffered to be cut down for small gain. He said that the mere spot where it had grown was still popularly known as “El Pino.”

† Appendix 8 [p. 426].

¹ [Ruskin’s favourite tree: compare Seven Lamps, ch. iii. § 17, Vol. VIII. p. 124, and see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. ix. § 3.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]