TREATMENT OF GROUND. FORMATION OF WALKS. 313 
cient obstacles, such as water or inaccessible ground appear 
to justify its course.* 
Although there are many situations where these rules must 
be greatly modified in practice, yet the improver will do well 
to bear them in mind, as it is infinitely more easy to make 
occasional deviations from general rules, than to carry out a 
tasteful improvement without any guiding principles. 
There are many fine country residences on the banks of 
the Hudson, Connecticut, and other rivers, where the proprie- 
tors are often much perplexed and puzzled by the situation 
of their houses ; the building presenting really two fronts , 
while they appear to desire only one. Such is the case when 
the estate is situated between the public road on one side, and 
the river on the other ; and we have often seen the Approach 
artificially tortured into a long circuitous route, in order 
finally to arrive at what the proprietor considers the true front, 
viz : the side nearest the river. When a building is so situa- 
ted, much the most elegant effect is produced by having two 
fronts : one, the entrance front , with the porch or portico 
nearest the road, and the other, the river front , facing the 
water. The beauty of the whole is often surprisingly en- 
hanced by this arrangement, for the visiter after passing by 
the Approach through a considerable portion of the grounds, 
with perhaps, but slight and partial glimpses of the river, is 
most agreeably surprised on entering the house, and looking 
from the drawing-room windows of the other front, to behold 
another beautiful scene totally different from the last, en- 
riched and ennobled by the wide-spread sheet of water before 
him. Much of the effect produced by this agreeable surprise 
from the interior, it will readily be seen, would be lost, if the 
*Repton’s Enquiry into the changes of taste in Landscape Gardening, p. 109, 
40 
