_Myself_. I have heard a connoisseur admire our own red brick in
the afternoon sun, above all other colors.
_Laurie_. There are some who delight too much in the stimulus of
color to be judges of harmony of coloring. It is so, often, with the
Italians. No color is too keen for the eye of the Neapolitan. He
thinks, with little Riding-hood, there is no color like red. I have
seen one of the most beautiful new palaces paved with tiles of a
brilliant red. But this, too, is barbarism.
_Myself_. You are pleased to call it so, because you make the
English your arbiters in point of taste; but I do not think they, on
your own principle, are our proper models. With their ever-weeping
skies, and seven-piled velvet of verdure, they are no rule for us,
whose eyes are accustomed to the keen blue and brilliant clouds of our
own realm, and who see the earth wholly green scarce two months in the
year. No white is more glistening than our January snows; no house
here hurts my eye more than the fields of white-weed will, a fortnight
hence.
_Laurie._ True refinement of taste would bid the eye seek repose
the more. But, even admitting what you say, there is no harmony. The
architecture is borrowed from England; why not the rest?
_Aglauron.
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