GARDEN ARCHITECTURE. 
185 
the range of vision at the mansion. A few only will here be mentioned. We 
have said that structures of a different style, and formed of dissimilar materials, 
interfere with the unity and expression of a scene in the vicinage of a residence. 
With conservatories, this is especially the case. Their outline is as remote as 
possible from that of a mansion, and the quantity of glass they contain renders 
them strikingly peculiar. Their object and size, too, are so very inferior to those 
of a dwelling, that, while they cannot, from their remoteness, be deemed its 
appendages, they are too insignificant to stand within view of it as independent 
structures, and the proximity of each weakens the effect of the other ; for whatever, 
of a similar nature, distracts the attention from a great work of art, liowever 
beautiful the former may be in itself, always suffers immensely by comparison, and 
lessens the pleasure derivable from the contemplation of the superior subject, unless 
the one be so despicable as to exhibit the other in a better light by contrast. 
A still more powerful objection may, however, be urged to the association in 
one view of a dwelling and a detached conservatory or group of conservatories. If 
the intermediate space be properly disposed, and walks, lawns, flower-plots, or 
flower-gardens be in direct connexion with the house, taste demands that these 
features should gradually merge into the more natural, diversified, and uncultured 
characteristics of the distant pleasure-groimds, and the pa-rk or meadows by which 
they are circumscribed. The same taste further requires, that flower-gardens, or 
flower-beds, on a smaller scale, should be attached to the conservatory ; and when 
this is visible from the house, two equally stringent rules are brought into complete 
collision. Indeed, instead of becoming more bold in proportion as it falls away 
from the mansion, the garden would thus pass into a decidedly more artificial and 
incongruous state, on account of the limited dimensions to which everything would 
have to be contracted in order to harmonize with the smallness of the conservatory 
buildings. 
If we have insisted rather strongly and at length on the necessity for keeping 
the conservatory sufficiently remote from the mansion not to be visible therefrom, 
it is because we deem the establishment of this principle essential in respect to the 
situation of such a building ; and any violation of it would at once strike at the 
root of what we have further to advance. Of conservatories connected with the 
dwelling, we shall simply observe that, with reference to the cultivation of plants, 
they are barely to be tolerated, and that no gardener who loves to excel in his art 
can regard them with complacency, except for a very few kinds. Wherever they 
are erected, glass roofs are a sine qua 7ion ; and they should always be incorporated 
with the building in some way, and not be added to it as an appendage. 
Other points relative to the proper site for a conservatory are, that it ought to 
be in a rather level portion of the garden, but slightly elevated, itself, above the 
surrounding surface ; that, while the area in which it stands must not be encom- 
passed by walls, nor its actual limits apparent, it is, nevertheless, needful that it be 
of ready access from a coal-yard, for the purpose of supplying it with fuel ; and that 
VOL. VIII. NO. XCII. B B 
