GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 23 



with which it may be surrounded ; but, in landscape-gardening, a building 

 is only considered as forming a whole in combination with the scenery by 

 which it is surrounded. Hence, as every whole must be composed of parts, 

 a building in a town, to aspire to that character, cannot be so simple as it 

 may be in the country, amidst verdant scenery. In the town, it ouglit, with 

 a view to its effect as a whole, to be broken into parts, one of which should 

 prevail in effect over the others, which ought to be subordinate to it, while 

 they co-operated with it in forming a whole. Thus, two pavilions joined 

 together, without a centre or main body, could not form a whole ; but, with 

 the main body larger than either pavilion, the whole produced would be 

 acknowledged as such by every eye accustomed to look at objects otherwise 

 than in detail. In the country, the plainest form of a house, a mere cube of 

 masonry, may form a whole, if judiciously surrounded by trees. These trees 

 must, if planted near the house, be either considerably lower than the house 

 is high ; or, if the trees are of the same height as the house, there must not be 

 more than one or two of them, or there must be so many as to render the trees 

 the main feature of the whole, and the house only a subordinate feature. 

 Wherever the house is surrounded, or even embraced, on three sides, with a 

 mass of trees of the same height as itself, the view fails to produce the effect 

 of a whole : no one object in the picture has the ascendency ; and, if it were 

 not for other counteracting associations, such as that of the wealth and dignity 

 of the proprietor, and the comfort and splendour which are known to exist 

 in and about such dwellings, the bare impression, as a landscape, would be 

 disagreeable. On the other hand, when a house is surrounded, or embraced 

 on three sides by a mass of wood, either a good deal lower than itself, or a 

 good deal higher, a whole is produced, in which the character of architec- 

 tural dignity prevails in the former case, and of sylvan dignity in the latter. 

 A square house in the country, in an open plain or pasture, unsurrounded by 

 trees, or by other buildings, can never form a whole ; because it has no object 

 of any kind to group with it. 



35. A house may form a whole by itselj, without the addition of trees, and 

 so may trees, without the addition of any other objects ; but as, in that case, 

 the house must be rendered independent of exterior objects by being broken 

 into parts, so must the Avood. In the one case, as in the other, one part must 

 take the lead from one point of view ; and all the other parts must obviously 

 belong to it, and yet be subordinate. In the case of a park sprinkled over 

 with trees, if these have been judiciously disposed, they will form a whole 

 with almost every change of the position of the spectator ; that is, those near 

 the eye will group together, and form the principal mass ; while those which 

 are more distant will form subordinate masses, and unite in supporting the 



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