WELBECK. Besides the character which the style and size of the house will confer on a place, there is a natural character of country, which must influence the site and disposition of a house; and though, in the country, there is not the same occasion, as in towns, for placing offices under ground, or for setting the principal apartments on a basement story, as it is far more desirable to walk from the house on the same level with the ground, yet there are situations which require to be raised above the natural surface: this is the case at Welbeck, where the park not only abounds with bold and conspicuous inequalities, but in many places there are almost imperceptible swellings in the ground, which art would in vain attempt to remedy, from their vast breadth; though they are evident defects whenever they appear to cut across the stems of trees and hide only half their trunks; for if the whole trunk were perfectly hid by such a swell, the injury would be less, because the imagination is always ready to sink the valley and raise the hill, if not checked in its efforts by some actual standard of measurement. In such cases the best expedient is to view the ground from a gentle eminence, that the eye may look over and, of course, lose these trifling inequalities.
