EMBELLISHMENTS. 365 



agreeably the forms of surrounding nature with the more 

 regular and uniform outlines of the building. 



The effect will not be less pleasing if viewed from 

 another point of view, viz. the terrace, or from the apart- 

 ments of the house itself. From either of these points, the 

 various objects enumerated, will form a rich foreground 

 to the pleasure-grounds or park a matter which painters 

 well know how to estimate, as a landscape is incomplete 

 and unsatisfactory to them, however beautiful the middle 

 or distant points, unless there are some strongly marked 

 objects in the foreground. In fine, the intervention of 

 these elegant accompaniments to our houses prevents us, 

 as Mr. Hope has observed, " from launching at once from 

 the threshold of the symmetric mansion, in the most abrupt 

 manner, into a scene wholly composed of the most 

 unsymmetric and desultory forms of mere nature, which 

 are totally out of character with the mansion, whatever 

 may be its style of architecture and furnishing."* 



The highly decorated terrace, as we have here supposed 

 it, would, it is evident, be in unison with villas of a some- 

 what superior style ; or, in other words, the amount of 

 enrichment bestowed upon exterior decoration near the 

 house, should correspond to the style of art evinced in the 

 exterior of the mansion itself. An humble cottage with 

 sculptured vases on its terrace and parapet, would be in 

 bad taste ; but any Grecian, Roman, or Italian villa, where 

 a moderate degree of exterior ornament is visible, or a 

 Gothic villa of the better class, will allow the additional 

 enrichment of the architectural terrace and its ornaments, 

 [ndeed the terrace itself, in so far as it denotes a raised dry 



Essay on Ornamental Gardening, by Thomas Hope. 



