A VILLA BELONGING TO JOHN SMITH, ESQ., M.P. FROM the relative situation of this place with respect to the capital, it must be treated as a villa, rather than a constant residence. This distinction is necessary to explain the principle of improvement, because, in the art of landscape gardening, two things are often confounded which require to be kept perfectly distinct, viz. the landscape and the garden. To the former belong the lawns, the woods, the water, and the prospect; these may be improved by imitating nature, but a garden, as I have often repeated, is a work of art. At Blenden Hall, the lawn is beautiful in shape, and its surface enriched with venerable trees, which are sufficiently numerous, without the aid of firs and Lombardy poplars; and the boundaries are generally well concealed, or blended with distant woods.
