CHAPTER VI 



EMBELLISHMENTS 



Nature, assuming a more lovely face, 

 Borrowing a beauty from the works of grace. 



COWPER. 



- Each odorous bushy shrub 



Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower; 

 Iris all hues, Roses and Jessamine 

 Rear'd high their flourished heads between, 

 And wrought Mosaic. 



MILTON. 



IN our finest places, or those country seats where much 

 of the polish of pleasure ground or park scenery is 

 kept up, one of the most striking defects is the want 

 of union between the house and the grounds. We are well 

 aware that from the comparative rarity of anything like a 

 highly kept place in this country, the want of this, which is 

 indeed like the last finish to the residence, is scarcely felt at 

 all. But this only proves the infant state of Landscape 

 Gardening here, and the little attention that has been paid 

 to the highest details of the art. 



If our readers will imagine, with us, a pretty villa, con- 

 veniently arranged and well constructed, in short, complete 

 in itself as regards its architecture, and at the same time, 

 properly placed in a smooth well kept lawn, studded with 

 groups and masses of fine trees, they will have an example 

 often to be met with, of a place, in the graceful school of 

 design, about which, however, there is felt to be a certain 

 incongruity between the house, a highly artificial object, 

 and the surrounding grounds, where the prevailing expres- 

 sion in the latter is that of beautiful nature. 



Let us suppose, for further illustration, the same house 

 and grounds with a few additions. The house now rising 

 directly out of the green turf which encompasses it, we 



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