PLEASURE GROUND. One of the subjects to which I was instructed to direct particular attention, was the fence and line of demarcation betwixt the lawn to be fed, and that to be mown and dressed as pleasure-ground. The general fall of the ground from the house to the valley, is an inclined plane, with the exception of a small rise in the centre, which had been artificially converted into a kind of bastion; this left a considerable space to be covered with flowers and shrubs; but, when I began to mark the situations of clumps and patches, I placed persons at different stations, and found that, in every part of the surface of this lawn, beyond the distance of twenty-five feet from the house, any shrub of six feet high would hide, not only the meadow below, but also that line of river which, by an unin- terrupted continuity of glitter, constitutes the leading feature of the place. This is very different from the stagnant sheets of water (as they are called) which require masses of planting to hide the mechanism of their artificial deception. One obvious advantage of removing the fence so much nearer the house, will be that of introducing the appearance of cattle to animate the landscape, and, by their perspective effects, to shew the distance of lawn betwixt the house and the Tamar; and, perhaps, a certain portion of the opposite bank might be thrown into pasture, with the same view, when access can be had to it by means of the weir proposed.
