LARGE COUNTRY VILLAS. 301 



figured. Another advantage of Redleaf is, tliat there is no marked boundary 

 to the property ; the mixture of wood, pasture, corn-field, hill, and dale, being 

 so much alike in general feature, in every part of the country, that it is utterly 

 impossible for a stranger to tell where any man's estate begins or ends. Hence, 

 there was no temptation to perpetrate that deformity which so often accom- 

 panies the clump, viz. the belt ; a most unsocial plantation in a moral point 

 of view, as shutting out all one's neighbours, Avhether poor or rich, and one 

 which, as it regards pictorial beauty, generally destroys all harmonious con- 

 nexion of the residence with the surrounding country, Mr. Wells's operations 

 on the park scenery of Redleaf were therefore comparatively few, and not 

 such as in any degree tended to alter the character of the place. He widened 

 the river in one situation, and altered its direction in another, in order that it 

 might be better seen from the windows of the house {see fig. 185.); he re- 

 moved hedgerows, and laid down arable lands in pasture, so as to give extent 

 and unity to the park or lawn ; he added to or diminished the masses of 

 wood, for the same purpose ; and he formed a walk, so as to enable a stranger 

 to make a general circuit of the place. -These were the great features of im- 

 provement ; and they have been executed with so much success, that a stranger, 

 when he arrives at the house, and looks at the views from its windows, is so 

 struck with the beauty and natural appearance of the scenery, that he cannot 

 conceive that anything more is wanting to render the place perfect of its kind. 

 But the most beautiful scenery in the world, whether the work of nature 

 alone, or the result of nature aided by art, will soon cease to please, unless it 

 bears marks of its appropriation to man, or can raise up associations of that 

 kind. Hence, the tourist, who admires natural scenery in travelling through 

 a beautiful country,' endeavours to make it his own, and to let others know 

 that he has done so, either by describing it in words which he can read to his 

 friends, or which he can print, and thus publish to the world (thereby show- 

 ing that he has as fully enjoyed the beauties of the scenery as if it were his 

 own) ; or he commits the scenery to paper by a sketch, by which he seems 

 also to appropriate it to himself. The purchaser of a portion of the finest 

 scenery in the world never rests satisfied until he has done something to it ; 

 and it is not enough to do something, however great a change that something 

 may have produced, unless it be such as to be recognised by the rest of man- 

 kind. It is absolutely necessary that what is done should be discoverable as 

 a work of art and taste. Hence, among purely natural scenery, some work 

 of art musi be introduced. Building is the common resource : but even a 

 gravel walk, to show off the natural beauties of the scene, with seats or rest- 

 ing-places formed along it at proper points of view, will sufiice. Admitting 

 this principle to be founded in nature, it was not to be supposed that Mr, Wells, 

 after having improved the general scenery of Redleaf, would rest satisfied 

 with admiring what he had done : on the contrary, having improved the 

 natural beauties of the place, he immediately set about adding to them the 

 beauties of art, by the formation of what may be strictly called garden scenery. 

 Now, the great merit of Mr, Wells as an amateur artist was, that, while he 

 heightened and improved the natural beauties of Redleaf, he had been con- 

 stantly employed, for nearly thirty years, in creating artificial beauties there, 

 which do not, in the slightest degree, interfere with the great leading natural 

 features of the place. There are very few other proprietors who would not, 

 while improving such a place as Redleaf, have done violence to the natural 

 character of the place, by the evident intrusion of art. 



