53 Notes on Gardens and Country Seats : — 



opposite side of the valley. The Ionic conservatory is the finest 

 thing of the kind in England ; and, in our opinion, far sur- 

 passes those of Syon and of Alton Towers. Its characteristics 

 are simplicity and grandeur. We do not know that we can 

 find a fault with the house, unless it were that the chimney- 

 shafts of the main body are not architectural enough; and that 

 those of the addition by Mr. Cockerell are altogether concealed. 

 This part contains the kitchens ; and the roof being unseen as well 

 as the chimney-shafts, the smoke appeared to us as if ascending 

 from ruins, or from a fallen-in roof. This bad effect is, in our 

 opinion, a sufficient argument why chimney-shafts should, in all 

 cases, be shown ; but if they are to be concealed in one part of 

 a house, they ought to be concealed in every part of it, for the 

 sake of unity of system. (See Arch. Mag., 11. 33.) There is 

 also a petty little wooden excrescence to the entrance loggia, 

 which conveys the idea of a porch to a London banker's counting- 

 house, rather than the portico of a villa. There ought here, as 

 in every large country villa, to have been a projecting portico to 

 drive under, as at Bear Wood, and at Eastwell Park by Bo- 

 nomi. Notwithstanding these trifling faults, and the alleged 

 unsuitableness of the severity of the Doric order for a villa, 

 we cannot help admiring the Grange as one of the noblest of 

 British villas. The approach to the entrance front is through 

 an avenue of lime trees, 100 ft. wide, and twice as many years 

 old ; having, as we are informed, beea planted in the time of 

 Inigo Jones, who built the first house, nearly on the present 

 site, for Lord Chancellor Hyde. The road has the great 

 fault of descending to the house ; but, as the fall is not above 

 S ft., it might easily be remedied by lowering the surface. An 

 avenue, to maintain a character of art, should not only be in a 

 straight direction, or in a direction composed of geometrical 

 lines; but it should be over a surface of geometrical forms : that 

 is, the surface should either be level, of an even slope, or, as 

 far as practicable, of regular swells and declivities. It should 

 never assume a direction, or pass over a surface, which could be 

 supposed to be natural or accidental. If the conducting of an 

 avenue over such a surface, and in such a direction, is found, in 

 any case, to be altogether unavoidable, then, to maintain the 

 character of art, recourse must be had to foreign trees, most 

 studiously arranged. Our readers will observe, that these 

 remarks on the subject of avenues have reference to our prin- 

 ciple of the Recognition of Art; a principle which we find to be 

 of the utmost value, both in landscape-gardening and in archi- 

 tecture. By this principle, we are enabled to determine many 

 points which were before involved in uncertainty, chiefly from 

 the difficulty of deciding what was meant by the imitation of 

 nature. The result will be, when the principle is properly 



