SECTION XI. 



Note I. Page 265. 



The lodge and entrance-gate to the park, with their combined features, 

 woody and architectural, if properly executed, should be one of the most 

 pleasing accessories to the landscape in a well laid-out place. As they 

 are the first to meet the stranger's eye, so they should, like a good saloon 

 or entrance-hall to a house, convey a favourable impression of the pro- 

 priety and good taste of the arrangements within. A good lodge should 

 present the idea of an "ornamental cottage," always harmonising with 

 the style of the mansion-house ; not a fantastical or nondescript hut, 

 covered with thatch and buried in creepers, and harmonising with nothing 

 good or bad, natural or artificial, about the place. But lodges and gate- 

 ways, in which we should expect the joint skill and taste of the architect 

 and the landscape-gardener, are, generally speaking, very dull and mo- 

 notonous things, which can do little credit to the artists, and give no 

 pleasure to the owner. 



It must, however, be acknowledged that it is the landscape-gardener, 

 and not the architect, who is chiefly in fault in this business. Mr 

 Hunt, and other late architects who have turned their attention to 

 rural decoration, have sufficiently redeemed the credit of their art by 

 various sketches for buildings of this description ; so that we are not 

 now, as heretofore, without models from which to form a very tasteful 

 selection. With regard to the other department, I shall beg leave, as a 

 sort of ex-professor of that art, to offer a few hints for the improve- 

 ment of park entrances on the present occasion. By rendering them 

 letter pictures than they now display, I should hope that they might 

 become at once more interesting to the traveller who passes by, and 

 more attractive to the visitor who enters the grounds to which they 

 belong. 



In accomplishing this object, I propose to proceed on two simple 

 principles. The first is, to recommend the study of open work, more 

 than has usually been adopted in the disposition of the woody accom- 

 paniments of the buildings ; and the second is, to give them foreground 

 and consequence, by throwing them back from the public road to a certain 



