It is often necessary to adopt all these expedients in the boundaries and subdivisions of parks; but the disgust excited at seeing a fence may be indulged too far, if in all cases we are to endeavour at concealment; and therefore the various situations and purposes of different sorts of fences deserve consideration. However we may admire natural beauties, we ought always to recollect, that, without some degree of art and management, it is impossible to prevent the injury which vegetation itself will occasion: the smooth bowling-green may be covered by weeds in a month, while the pastured ground preserves its neatness throughout the year. There is no medium between the keeping of art and of nature, it must be either one or the other, art or nature, that is, either mowed, or fed by cattle; and this practical part of the management of a place forms one of the most difficult points of the professors of art, because the line of fence, which separates the dressed ground from the pasture, is too often objectionable; yet there is not less impropriety in admitting cattle to feed in a flower-garden, than in excluding them from such a tract of land as might be fed with advantage.
