General Principles 



those nameless little graces which go to make up the inter- 

 esting diversity that atmospheric phenomena occasion. At 

 morning, midday, twilight, or moonlight, beneath sunshine 

 or deep cloudiness, before or after rain, when the weather is 

 soft and balmy, or harsh and chill, — at all seasons, in fact, 

 and under all circumstances, except when a wind is stirring, 

 water will present, like the atmosphere, a constantly chang- 

 ing medium through which a landscape may be examined. 



A final constituent of variety is undulation of the surface 

 of the ground. It is not all places, of course — possibly not 

 many of them — that afford scope for the adoption of this. 

 And it must be set about with great judgment. Undulating 



Fig. 23. Treatment of Boundary. 



the ground, for the mere sake of doing so, when all the coun- 

 try beyond is flat and tame, will only appear peculiar and 

 eccentric. There must be a reason for what is done, and if 

 there be some correspondence, likewise, with the district out- 

 side the garden, it will be still more correct and appropriate. 

 In building a house, its ground floor is now generally placed 

 several feet above the natural level of the land, and there has 

 consequently to be raised around it an artificial bank. Along 

 the boundary of a place it is often further desirable to form 

 another low bank, fig. 23, if the material can be had, and to 

 raise the beds or masses towards the edges of the lawn, that 

 the limits of the ground and the line of the walks may be 

 more perfectly hidden. Between these banks, then, there 

 will be a sort of hollow basin, composing the lawn, and sus- 



