The Choice of a Place 15 



especially if it be a hedge where such a thing would be wanted, 

 will be of the greatest use, as it would take many years to 

 rear it. But it is better that a plot should be wholly without 

 every description of appurtenance than that things of an 

 improper class or of bad construction or in a wrong position 

 should exist to tempt the purchaser to retain them, as the 

 greatest dissatisfaction is commonly experienced from patch- 

 ing up an old house or other building that is not strictly 

 suitable, and which can never afterwards be made so. It is 

 far more pleasurable, and in the end more economical, to 

 arrange and erect everything anew, than to submit to great 

 inconvenience for the sake of preserving some relic of 

 things that actually exist, because they happen to be ancient. 



9. The View. — Whatever kind of view is sought to be 

 obtained from a place can be best compassed where it is 

 situated on a slight eminence; and the rule will hold good 

 whether the view be one of the garden itself, as seen from the 

 house, of natural scenery, of an arable and agricultural dis- 

 trict, of other estates, of a river or a lake or the sea, of distant 

 hills, or of good individual objects. 



In relation to the garden itself as viewed from the house, 

 some modification of the principle may perhaps seem neces- 

 sary. Although a place, the ground of which rises as it 

 recedes from the house, appears larger, because more of its 

 surface is seen, yet the reverse of this would be the case 

 when looked at from the outside of the garden or from 

 any point just within its boundary; and a slope from the 

 house gives to the latter an appearance of dryness and impor- 

 tance, and enables one to bring in the exterior landscape 

 more easily. This may be better understood by reference to 

 fig. I, which represents a piece of land the form of which 

 is entirely convex, with the house on its summit. If the 

 ground also rises in a gentle bank, just towards the bound- 



