LANDSCAPE GARDENING. * 375 
brow of the hill, a terrace was absolutely necessary, as well for safety as 
for the eye of vigilance. 
Happily the necessity for embattled terraces no longer exists; but, 
considering them as most convenient appendages to a house in the 
middle of a park, it is to be regretted, perhaps, that, in the modern or 
Brownian style of landscape gardening, the terrace was an object of 
aversion, and consequently was doomed to destruction. The space 
it occupied is now bald and bare; ” and the house which such a 
feature dignified is now set out on the naked lawn, as if it “ had 
dropped from the clouds.” The few trees which are allowed to remain 
in its vicinity, seem afraid lest they should either shade or shelter it ; 
and thus insulated, the mansion stands exposed, an eye-trap to all the 
country round. Instead of appearing embosomed in its gardens, and 
flanked by evergreen shrubs and trees to unite the building with the 
park and surrounding country, it is stripped of all those appendages 
which give ideas of unity and ornamental comfort to a country resi¬ 
dence. The same modern style of improvement removed the stables, 
laundry, and some other offices to a considerance distance from the 
house, and often made them tastelessly obtrusive; and as they usually 
had an ornamented facade somewhat resembling the style of the man¬ 
sion, the whole appeared to be a wing of the latter, separated therefrom 
by some convulsion of nature. The kitchen-garden, too, with its 
forcing-houses, &c., was deemed unfit to be near the house, and was 
often pushed away into some hollow, a mile or two distant. 
That there are many instances of such bad taste in this country at 
the present day, is notorious. Brown’s idea of allowing the sheep and 
cattle to graze up to the windows,” has been too much acted on, and, 
in some instances, which I have been witness to, with the most disagree¬ 
able effect. Porticoes and colonnades have become cattle-sheds, causing 
J o 
a world of work, and much tear and wear of mops and brooms. And 
even where these visitants have been kept off by a slight iron fence, the 
usual resource, the herds are sure to assemble on the west side of the 
house every morning in hot weather, where they prove an intolerable 
nuisance, especially if the carriage-road passes on that side. 
How the father of the present proprietor remained inflexible against 
the fashionable taste of his day, and unmoved by the prevailing opinion 
that terraces were deformities, cannot be accounted for otherwise than 
by supposing that, like the amiable Shenstone, he thought for himself, 
and could not give way to new-fangled notions which had no rational 
basis either on the score of scenographic effect, propriety, or convenience; 
and the result of his non-compliance, and refusal to “ follow a multitude 
to do evil,” is the preservation of a most beautiful trait of the place, 
