WELBECK. The view from the principal apartments should bear some proportion to the importance of the house itself; not so much in the quantity or extent of the prospect as in the nature of the objects which compose the scenery; an extensive prospect being only applicable to a castle, a villa, or a belvedere. The landscape from a palace should everywhere appear appropriate to the magnificence or pleasure of its inhabitants: the whole should be, or, at least, appear to be, a park, unlimited and unconfined by those lines of division or boundary which characterize the large grass fields of a dairy farm. Yet a park has a character distinct from & forest; for while we admire, and even imitate, the romantic wildness of nature, we ought never to forget that a park is the habitation of men, and not solely devoted to beasts of the forest. I am convinced that some enthusiastic admirers of uncultivated nature are too apt to overlook this distinction. Park scenery compared with forest scenery, is like an historical picture compared with a landscape; nature must alike prevail in both, but that which relates to man should have a higher place in the scale of arts.
