We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is
between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in
healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly
in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In
order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the
different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in
nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one
incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most
delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most
brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed.
I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most
simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice
first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there
is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all
nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its
monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and
especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and
rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which
there is not in light.
Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree,
becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is
obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage
is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and
harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an
entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful
according to the length of the previous monotony.
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