Different Characters and Situations ii 



of extent is rather disgusting than pleasing, and little 

 advantage is gained by attempts to let in distant objects ; 

 yet there is such infinite beauty to be produced by judi- 

 cious management of the home scenery, as may well 

 compensate the want of prospect. There is always great 

 cheerfulness in a view on a flat lawn, well stocked with 

 cattle, if it be properly bounded by a wood at a distance, 

 neither too far off to lessen its importance nor too near 

 to act as a confinement to the scene ; and which contrib- 

 utes also to break those straight lines that are the only 

 causes of disgust in a flat situation. Uneven ground 

 may be more striking as a picture and more interesting 

 to the stranger's eye, it may be more bold or magni- 

 ficent or romantic, but the character of cheerfulness is 

 peculiar to the plain. Whether this effect be produced 

 by the apparent ease of communication, or by the larger 

 proportion of sky which enters into the landscape, or 

 by the different manner in which cattle form themselves 

 into groups on a plain, or on a sloping bank, I confess 

 I am at a loss to decide : all three causes may, perhaps, 

 contribute to produce that degree of cheerfulness which 

 every one must have observed in the scenery of Milton. 

 Hasells Hall. There has hardly been proposed to 

 my consideration a spot in which both situation and 

 character have undergone a greater change than at 

 Hasells Hall. From the former mode of approaching 

 the house, especially from the Cambridge side, a stranger 

 could hardly suppose there was any unequal ground in 

 the park : even to the south, where the ground natur- 

 ally falls towards a deep valley, the mistaken interference 

 of art, in former days, had bolstered it up by flat bowl- 

 ing-greens, and formal terraces ; while the declivity was 

 so thickly planted as entirely to choke up the lowest 

 ground, and shut out all idea of inequality. The first 



