EMBELLISHMENTS. 
365 
agreeably the forms of surrounding nature with the more 
regular and uniform outlines of the building. 
The effect will not be less pleasing if viewed from 
another point of view, viz. the terrace, or from the apart- 
ments of the house itself. From either of these points, the 
various objects enumerated, will form a rich foreground 
to the pleasure-grounds or park — a matter which painters 
well know how to estimate, as a landscape is incomplete 
and unsatisfactory 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 desultory forms of mere nature, which 
are totally out of character with the mansion, whatever 
may be its style of architecture 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 
# 
enrichment bestowed upon 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 degree of exterior ornament is visible, or a 
Gothic villa of the better class, will allow the additional 
enrichment of the architectural terrace and its ornaments. 
Indeed the terrace itself, in so far as it denotes a raised dry 
* Essay on Ornamental Gardening, by Thomas Hope. 
