346 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Part II. 



110. The old English country house had also that very 

 sensible arrangement of the garden, whereby it was made 

 to accord with the formal character of the house ; being laid 

 out in terraces, and beds of geometrical patterns, as in France 

 and Italy; and thus, the transition from the formal character 

 of the house to the wildness of nature being gradual, the 

 eye was not offended by the incongruity of two distinct 

 sentiments. {See Part I. p. 15.) By terraces and a dressed 

 garden I do not mean those mere slopes of turf, without 

 plan or symmetry, which sometimes pretend to the name, 

 but which are only fit for roadside villas. Terraces must be 

 of masonry, with balustrades, or open work, to give an agree- 

 able play of light and shade, having vases at intervals 

 along their summit. A house, particularly when in a flat 

 country, being thus separated from the surrounding level 

 space, acquires additional importance ; the terraces, too, close 

 to the house form a grand basement to it, and prevent that 

 impression, sometimes given by the line of the meadow, or 

 the level park, of its having fallen from heaven into a field, 

 or of having been a recent introduction there. Supported by 

 the terrace, the house appears (as it ought to do) the main 

 object, to which the surrounding objects are subservient, and 

 to which all about it centres. The proper ornamental beds of 

 a dressed garden are not those of whimsical forms cut in turf; 

 they should be part of a general design, filled with masses of 

 flowers, each of a different colour, and well combined ; and 

 they will have a pleasing effect, from their patterns, in winter 

 as well as in summer. Nor is it sufficient to have vases dotted 

 about lawns or grass slopes, as if they were " neighbour's land- 

 marks," or had been left there by the gardener till he could 

 find a suitable position for them. Their place is not on the 

 bare turf; and there is the same abruptness in this mixture 

 of the artificial and the natural as in the juxtaposition of wild 

 nature with the rectangular house. Half a century ago there 



