128 The Art of Landscape Gardening 



Where this sunk fence or fosse is adopted, the deception 

 ought to be complete, but this cannot be where grass- 

 and corn-lands are divided by such a fence. If it is used 

 betwixt one lawn and another, the mind acquiesces in 

 the fraud even after it is discovered, so long as the fence 

 itself does not obtrude on the sight. We must therefore 

 so dispose a fosse or ha ! ha! that we may look across it 

 and not along it. For this reason a sunk fence must 

 be straight and not curving, and it should be short, else 

 the imaginary freedom is dearly bought by the actual 

 confinement, since nothing is so difficult to pass as 

 a deep sunk fence. 



4. A fourth expedient 1 have occasionally adopted, 

 and which (if I may use the expression) is a more bold 

 deception than a sunk fence, viz. a light hurdle instead 

 of paling; the one we are always used to consider as 

 a fixed and immoveable fence at the boundary of a park 

 or lawn; the other only as an occasional division of one 

 part from the other. It is a temporary inconvenience, 

 and not a permanent confinement. 



It is often necessary to adopt all these expedients in 

 the boundaries and subdivisions of parks ; but the dis- 

 gust excited at seeing a fence may be indulged too far, 

 if in all cases we are to endeavour at concealment, and 

 therefore the various situations and purposes of different 

 sorts of fences deserve consideration. 



However we may admire natural beauties, we ought 

 always to recollect that, without some degree of art and 

 management it is impossible to prevent the injury which 

 vegetation itself will occasion: the smooth bowling-green 

 may be covered by weeds in a month, while the pastured 

 ground preserves its neatness throughout the year. There 

 is no medium between the keeping of art and of nature. 

 It must be either one or the other, art or nature ; that is. 



