ABSTRACT
The partly-regular and partly-irregular forms of our old farm-houses, and our gabled gothic manors and abbeys, appear quite in harmony with an undulating, wooded country. In towns people prefer symmetrical architecture; and in towns it produces in people no feeling of incongruity, because all surrounding things—men, horses, vehicles—are symmetrical also. The connexion between symmetrical architecture and animal forms, may be inferred from the kind of symmetry people expect, and are satisfied with, in regular buildings. In a Greek temple people require that the front shall be symmetrical in itself, and that the two flanks shall be alike; but people do not look for uniformity between the flanks and the front, nor between the front and the back. The identity of this symmetry with that found in animals is obvious. In styles indigenous in the country, people not only find the general irregularity characteristic of surrounding things, but people may trace some kinship between each kind of irregularity and local circumstances.
