270 



few absurdities. Still in some lights the refor- 

 mation seems to me to have been pushed too 

 far. Though an avenue crossing a park or sep- 

 arating a lawn, and intercepting views from the 

 seat to which it leads, are capital faults, yet a 

 great avenue * cut through woods, perhaps be- 

 fore entering a park, has a noble air, and, 



" I^ike footmen running- before coaches 

 To tell the inn what lord approaches," 



announces the habitation of some man of dis- 

 tinction. 



In other places the total banishment of all 

 particular neatness immediately about a house, 

 which is frequently left gazing by itself in the 

 middle of a park, is a defect. Sheltered and 

 even close walks, in so very uncertain a climate 

 as ours, are comforts ill exchanged for the few 

 picturesque days that we enjoy ; and when- 

 ever a family can purloin a warm and even 

 something of an old-fashioned garden, from the 

 landscape designed for them by the undertaker 



* Of this kind, one of the most noble is that of Stanstead, 

 the seat of the Earl of Halifax, traversing an ancient 

 wood for two miles, and bounded by the sea. The very 

 extensive lawns at that seat, richly enclosed by venera- 

 ble beech woods, and checkered by single beeches of 

 vast size, particularly when you stand in the portico of 

 the temple and survey the landscape that wastes itself 

 in rivers of broken seas recall such exact pictures of 

 Claude Lorraine, that it is difficult to conceive that he did 

 not paint them from this very spot. 



