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The Complete Works: Poetry of architecture, Poems (1894)
The Complete Works Poetry of architecture Poems - 1894 Author:John Ruskin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WORKS OF ART. Whether Works of Art may, with Propriety, be combined with the Sublimity of Nature ; and what would be the most appropriate Situation for the pr... more »oposed Monument to the Memory of Sir Walter Scott, in Edinburgh ? By Kata Phusin. The question which has been brought before the readers of the Architectural Magazine by W. is one of peculiar and excessive interest; one in which no individual has any right to advance an opinion, properly so called, the mere result of his own private habits of feeling ; but which should be subjected, as far as possible, to a fixed and undoubted criterion, deduced from demonstrable principles and indisputable laws. Therefore, as we have been referred to, we shall endeavour, in as short a space as possible, to bring to bear upon the question those principles whose truth is either distinctly demonstrable, or generally allowed. The question resolves into two branches. First, whether works of art may with propriety, be combined with the sublimity of nature. This is a point which is discussable by every one. And, secondly, what will be the most appropriate locality for the monument to Scott at Edinburgh. And this we think may be assumed to be a question interesting to, and discussable by, one-third of the educated population of Great Britain : as that proportion is, in all probability, acquainted with the ups and downs of " Auld Reekie." For the first branch of the question, we have to confess ourselves altogether unable to conjecture what the editor of the Courant means by the phrase " works of art," in the paragraph at page 500. Its full signification embraces all the larger creations of the architect, but it cannot be meant to convev such a meaning here, or the proposition is purer nonsense than we ever encountered in print . Yet, in ...« less