Roads and Paths 



ence between a bad approach and a good 

 one. 



It is folly, every one will confess, to force 

 a landscape-gardener to lay out a straight 

 road where a curved one would look better, 

 or a curved road where a direct one would 

 be more sensible and therefore more beauti- 

 ful ; to compel him to run a road over a 

 hillock which it might encircle, or down 

 into a hollow and up again when it might 

 pass to one side ; to give him no convenient 

 access to the high road except at a point 

 where turning-in is awkward ; to forbid him 

 to take in a good point of view which 

 might easily be shown from the drive, or to 

 show unpleasing objects which might be con- 

 cealed. And yet it would be easy to point 

 to many American places where just such 

 necessities have been forced upon the land- 

 scape-gardener by an error in the placing of 

 the house, or where, to avoid them, he is 

 compelled to spend a large amount of mon- 

 ey, and perhaps to injure the general effect 

 of the place, in altering the configuration 

 of the ground. When the position of the 

 principal entrance relative to the high road 



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