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142 LETTERS.
streets and buildings, the feeHng which most
predominates is that of stern and sober
dignity.
The streets are narrow, shaded by
lofty and sohd palaces, all partaking more or
less of a castellated type.
The walls of these
buildings are very frequently raised in bosses
or rustic work, a mode of masonry which,
if not absolutely invented by Brunelleschi, was
yet so frequently employed by him and his
school in these structures, as to become almost
a characteristic of the Tuscan style. The
pleasure which the mind receives from architecture
is of a very complex nature: it is
a sensation in which mere beauty of form is
only one element; certainly one of great
importance, yet by no means paramount.
For it is as a memorial of the state and
the condition of the people, as the visible
embodying of the moral and physical condition
of the nation, that architecture possesses
its chief positive value; and it is perhaps