236 



Qiieries and Anstvers to Queries. 



51 



900 ft. 



therefore contract my data and desiderata into as small a space as pos- 

 sible. 



Data. Given, then, about fifty or sixty acres of land on the banks of a 

 lake, of which about one half is a steep declivity, and the other sloping, 

 with various round knolls and breaks, to the water's edge. The ground is 

 almost undecorated, except by a villa in the Grecian style, consisting 

 of dining and drawing rooms, each 22 ft. by 16 ft., looking upon the lake; 

 behind them a breakfast-room 16 ft. square, a lobby, and library, 14 ft. by 

 15ft., with a small bath-room adjoining: offices behind. The library and 

 drawing-room comnuinicate with a green-house, and the house itself stands 

 upon a terrace 25 ft. broad, opposite the lake front, including 7 ft. the 

 breadth of a veranda. From the terrace you descend 5 ft. to what is at 

 present a common grass field. There is a highway about 300 ft. from the 

 house, between it and the lake, which cannot be diverted. There is but 

 one convenient and practicable situation for culinary forcing-houses (now 

 building), and that is on a hillock in a field to the north of the house, be- 

 hind which is the farm-yard : the stable-yard adjoins the offices of the man- 

 sion. But I must refer to the accompanying plan {^gs. 49, 50.), and genera 

 view (figs. 51, 52.). 



Required, a plan and detail of improvement, adapted to this situa- 

 tion. And here I must further inform my landscape-gardener, that this 

 place is my constant residence ; that I have but one gardener, occasionally 

 assisted by the farm servants ; that my fortune will not admit of the 

 whole sixty acres being converted into park and pleasure-ground, but that 

 I wish them to be laid out rather as an ornamental farm, attached to a 

 gentleman's residence and pleasure-grounds, wherefore I must confine my 

 improver to about six or seven acres of dressed ground, shrubberies, &c., 

 including a kitchen-garden sufficiently large to supply a family of ten per- 

 sons ; that I am somewhat of a recluse, taking great delight in umbrageous 

 groves, in murmuring streams, trees, shrubs, and flowers more especially. 



" Ego laudo ruris an\ceni 



Rivos, et musco circumlita saxa, nemusque."* 



I am a small farmer; in short, attached to rural affairs, unattached to a 

 wife, and not banned with bairns ; I say to my garden, as Hero says to her 

 lover, in Ovid, 



' " Te, O mi sola voluptas, . 

 . . . amo."t 



* "I prefer a delightful villa, with its streams, its moss-covered rocks, 

 and groves." 



t ." Thee, O my sole delight ! I love." 



