220 Landscape Gardening 



more extensive and complete in itself. The kitchen yard, 

 the clothes-drying ground, the dairy, and all the structures 

 which are so practically important in a country house, have 

 abundant room and space, and the domestics can perform 

 their appointed labors with ease and freedom, without dis- 

 turbing the different aspect of any other portion of the 

 grounds. There are few new sites where there is not natur- 

 ally a "blind side" indicated; a side where there is a fringe 

 of wood, or some natural disposition of surface, which 

 points it out as the spot where the kitchen offices should 

 be placed, in order to have the utmost shelter and privacy, 

 - at the same time leaving the finer glades, openings, and 

 views for the more refined, social and beautiful portions of 

 the residence. Wherever these indications are wanting they 

 must be created by artificial planting of belts and groups of 

 trees and shrubs, - - not in stiff and formal lines like fences, 

 but in an irregular and naturally varied manner, so as to 

 appear as if formed of a natural copse, or rather so as not 

 to attract special attention at all. 



We are induced to insist upon this point the more strenu- 

 ously because, along with the taste for the architecture of 

 Pericles (may we indulge the hope that he is not permitted 

 to behold the Greek architecture of the new world!) which 

 came into fashion in this country fifteen or twenty years 

 ago, came also the fashion of sweeping away everything that 

 was not temple-like about the house. Far from recognizing 

 that man lives a domestic life, that he cooks, washes, 

 bakes and churns in his country house, and, therefore, that 

 kitchen offices (tastefully concealed if you please, but still 

 ample) are a necessary, and therefore truthful part of his 

 dwelling, - - they went upon the principle that if man had 

 fallen, and was no longer one of the gods, he might still live 

 in a temple dedicated to the immortals. A clear space on 

 all sides, pediments at each end, and perhaps a colonnade 

 all round; this is the undomestic, uncomfortable ideal of 

 half the better country houses in America. 



Having fixed upon and arranged the blind side of the 

 house - - which, of course, will naturally be placed so as to 



