IN the execution of my profession, I have often experienced great difficulty and opposition in attempting to correct the false and mistaken taste for placing a large house in a naked grass-field, without any apparent line of separation between the ground exposed to cattle and the ground annexed to the house, which I consider as peculiarly under the management of art. This line of separation being admitted, advantage may be easily taken to ornament the lawn with flowers and shrubs, and to attach to the mansion that scene of embellished neatness, usually called a pleasure-ground. The quantity of this dressed ground was formerly very considerable. The royal gardens of Versailles, or those of Kensington Palace, when filled with company, want no other animation; but a large extent of ground without moving objects, however neatly kept, is but a melancholy scene. If solitude delight, we seek it rather in the covert of a wood, or the sequestered alcove of a flower-garden, than in the open lawn of an extensive pleasure-ground.
