EMBELLISHMENTS. 
391 
ments of the house itself. From either of these points, the 
various objects enumerated, will forma rich foreground to 
the pleasure-grounds or park — a matter which painters well 
know how to estimate, as a landscape is incomplete and un- 
satisfactory to them, however beautiful the middle or distant 
points, unless there are some strongly marked objects in the 
foreground. In fine, the intervention of these elegant 
accompaniments to our houses prevents us, as Mr. Hope has 
observed, “from launching at once from the threshold of the 
symmetric mansion, in the most abrupt manner, into a 
scene wholly composed of the most unsymmetric and de- 
sultory forms of mere nature, which are totally out of cha- 
racter with the mansion, whatever may be its style of archi- 
tecture and furnishing.”* 
The highly decorated terrace, as we have here supposed 
it, would, it is evident, be in unison with villas of a some- 
what superior style ; or, in other words, the amount of en- 
richment bestowed on exterior decoration near the house, 
should correspond to the style of art evinced in the exterior 
of the mansion itself. An humble cottage with sculptured 
vases on its terrace and parapet, would be in bad taste ; but 
any Grecian, Roman, or Italian villa, where a moderate de- 
gree of exterior ornament is visible, or a Gothic villa of the 
better class, will allow the additional enrichment of the ar- 
chitectural terrace and its ornaments. Indeed the terrace 
itself, in so far as it denotes a raised dry platform around 
the house, is a suitable and appropriate appendage to every 
dwelling, of whatever class. 
The width of a terrace around a house, may vary from 
five to twenty feet, or more, in proportion as the building is 
Essay on Ornamental Gardening , by Thomas Hope. 
