Ruins, are a class of buildings beautiful as objects, expressive as characters, and peculiarly calculated to connect with their appendages into elegant groups: they may be accommodated with ease to irregularity of ground, and their disorder is improved by it; they may be intimately blended with trees and with thickets, and the interruption is an advantage; for imperfection and obscurity are their properties; and to carry the imagination to something greater than is seen, their effect.

They may for any of these purposes be separated into detached pieces; contiguity is not necessary nor even the appearance of it, if the relation be preserved, but straggling ruins have a bad effect, when the several parts are equally considerable.

There should be one large mass, to raise an idea of greatness, to attract the others about it, and to be a common centre of union to all; the smaller pieces then mark the original dimensions of one extensive structure; and no longer appear to be the remains of several little buildings.

All remains excite an inquiry into the former state of the edifice, and fix the mind in a contemplation on the use it was applied to; besides the characters expressed by their style and position, they suggest ideas which would not arise from the buildings, if entire.

The purposes of many have ceased; an abbey, or a castle, if complete, can now be no more than a dwelling; the memory of the times, and of the manners to which they were adapted, is preserved only in history and in ruins; and certain sensations of regret, of veneration, or compassion, attend the recollection; nor are these confined to the remains of buildings which are now in disuse; those of an old mansion raise reflections on the domestic comforts once enjoyed, and the ancient hospitality which reigned there. Whatever building we see in decay, we naturally contrast its present to its former state, and delight to ruminate on the comparison. It is true that such effects properly belong to real ruins; but they are produced in a certain degree by those which are fictitious; the impressions are not so strong, but they are exactly similar; and the representation, though it does not present facts to the memory, yet suggests subjects to the imagination; but in order to affect the fancy, the supposed original design should be clear, the use obvious, and the form easy to trace; no fragments should be hazarded without a precise meaning, and an evident connexion; none should be perplexed in their construction or uncertain as to their application.

Conjectures about the form, raise doubts about the existence of the ancient structure; the mind must not be allowed to hesitate; it must be hurried away from examining into the reality by the exactness and the force of the resemblance. - Whate-ley.