with its pleasant variety of surface treatment and means of descent, is in 

 one direct line from a garden door in the middle of the house front. 



The lowest flight of steps, the subject of the first picture, has a simple 

 but excellent wrought-iron railing, of that refined character common to 

 the time of its making. It was draped, perhaps rather over-draped when 

 the picture was painted, with a glory of Virginia Creeper in fullest 

 gorgeousness of autumn colouring. This question of the degree to which 

 it is desirable to allow climbing plants to cover architectural forms, is one 

 that should be always carefully considered. Bad architecture abounds 

 throughout the country, and free-growing plants often play an entirely 

 beneficent part in concealing its mean or vulgar or otherwise unsightly 

 character. But where architectural design is good and pure, as it is at 

 Bulwick, care should be taken in order to prevent its being unduly 

 covered. Old brick chimney-stacks of great beauty are often smothered 

 with Ivy, and the same insidious native has obliterated many a beautiful 

 gate-pier and panelled wall. But the worst offender in modern days has 

 been the far-spreading Ampelopsis Veitchii, useful for the covering of 

 mean or featureless buildings, but grievously and mischievously out of 

 place when, for instance, ramping unchecked over the old brickwork of 

 Wolsey's Palace at Hampton Court. Some may say that it is easily 

 pulled off ; but this is not so, for it leaves behind, tightly clinging to the 

 old brick surface, the dried-up sucker and its tentacle, desiccated to a 

 consistency like iron wire. These are impossible to detach without 

 abrasion of surface, while, if left, they show upon the brick as a scurfy 

 eruption, as disfiguring to the wall-face as are the scars of smallpox on a 

 human countenance. 



The iron-railed steps in the picture come down upon a grassy space 

 rather near its end. Behind the spectator it stretches away for quite four 

 times the length seen in the picture. It is bounded on the side opposite 

 the steps by a long rectangular fish-pond. The whole length of this is 

 not seen, for the grass walk narrows and passes between old yew hedges, 

 one on the side of the pond, the other backed by some other trees against 

 the kitchen garden wall, which is a prolongation of the terrace wall in 

 the picture. 



The garden is still beautifully kept, but owes much of its wealth of 



12 



