160 THE STONES OF VENICE

cottage cannot be grand as such, and the parasitical grandeur which it may possess by accidental qualities, is the character for which men have long agreed to use the inaccurate word “Picturesque.”

§ 36. On the other hand, beauty cannot be parasitical. There is nothing so small or so contemptible, but it may be beautiful in its own right. The cottage may be beautiful, and the smallest moss that grows on its roof, and the minutest fibre of that moss which the microscope can raise into visible form, and all of them in their own right, not less than the mountains and the sky; so that we use no peculiar term to express their beauty, however diminutive, but only when the sublime element enters, without sufficient worthiness in the nature of the thing to which it is attached.

§ 37. Now this picturesque element, which is always given, if by nothing else, merely by ruggedness, adds usually very largely to the pleasurableness of grotesque work, especially to that of its inferior kinds; but it is not for this reason to be confounded with the grotesqueness itself. The knots and rents of the timbers, the irregular lying of the shingles on the roofs, the vigorous light and shadow, the fractures and weather-stains of the old stones, which were so deeply loved and so admirably rendered by our lost Prout,¹ are the picturesque elements of architecture; the grotesque ones are those which are not produced by the working of nature and of time, but exclusively by the fancy of man; and, as also for the most part by his indolent and uncultivated fancy, they are always, in some degree, wanting in grandeur, unless the picturesque element be united with them.

§ 38. (3.) Inordinate play. The reader will have some difficulty, I fear, in keeping clearly in his mind the various divisions of our subject; but, when he has once read the chapter through, he will see their places and coherence. We have next to consider the expression throughout of the minds of men who indulge themselves in unnecessary play. It is evident that a large number of these men will be more

¹ [See Vol. X. p. 301 n.]

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