The province of garden architecture is, primarily, to supply fitting appendages and accompaniments to a house, so that the latter may not appear naked, alone, and unsupported. If judiciously applied, it will be effective in helping to produce a good outline or group; to carry down the lines of the house; to connect it with other buildings, such as a conservatory, arbour, &c.; to provide a proper basement for the house; to afford shelter and privacy to a flower garden; to extend the façade or frontage of a house; to shut out back yards, offices, &c.; to enrich, vary, and enliven the garden; to supply conveniences, such as shelter, receptacles for birds, plants, sculpture, &c., with museums for works of art or specimens of natural history, and supports for climbing plants; to indicate refinement, wealth, and a love of art; and otherwise to blend the various constituents of a garden with the house, and harmonise the two by communicating a more artistic tone to the garden.

Wing walls to a house, broken by a conservatory, and terminated by a summer house, aviary, museum, or sculpture-room; corridors, similarly broken and terminated, and glazed or open so as merely to form covered ways; conservative walls, either glazed or simply protected by bold projecting piers and copings; viaducts, aqueducts, arbours, arches, arcades, tunnels, boathouses, temples, prospect and flag-towers; with an almost infinite number of smaller objects, such as sculptured figures, sun-dials, statuary, pillars, obelisks, terrace walls, &c., constitute the elements with which garden architecture has to work.

In its leading traits, it necessarily comes within the same category as house architecture, and is governed by the same principles. Like the house, it should exhibit design, some degree of symmetry, harmony of parts, unity of expression, consistency of style, fitness for the locality, adaptation for the intended purpose, and stability and permanence of appearance.

But it should also display a greater amount of lightness and elegance; a comparative absence of regularity; a decorative rather than an exclusively useful purpose; a superior variety

of outline; extreme attention to general grouping; a blending of its forms with those of nature; an especial regard for placing its creations where they will have a distinct meaning and object; a leaning to the use of good materials, but somewhat rougher than those employed in the house; a preference rather for a picturesque outline, than for mere ornamental details; and, as a most important characteristic, a marked boldness and prominence of parts. Indeed, picturesqueness, such as would be occasioned by changes of level in the ground, by diversity in the heights of walls, by prominent piers, buttresses, or cornices, by broad projecting eaves to the roofs of buildings, and by any arrangement that will yield depth of shadow, should be the ruling constituent of garden architecture.

Every architectural object, admitted into a garden, should form part of the general plan of that garden, and fit into its proper place. It will create a serious incongruity if merely put down at random, or not duly established as a part of the main design. Smaller architectural ornaments, too, must be adequately connected with and kept in the neighbourhood of the house or other sufficiently important building; otherwise, they will be too different from the forms of nature to appear harmonious.

A strictly garden building, or object, unless very large, should never be obtrusive. It ought always to be quiet-looking, and not violently different in colour from the surrounding vegetation. Hence, white, whether in marble, stone, or painted objects, is decidedly to be avoided, and a warm drab, or darker tint preferred.

When a terrace or other ornamental wall-whether balustraded or otherwise pierced, or simply devoid of any relief in the way of openings becomes the principal foreground to a garden or other scene, as viewed from the windows of the house, it will, however much it may be broken up by piers, vases, &c., appear too hard, cold, and monotonous without some aid from grass and shrubs. In all such cases, therefore, there should be a broad band of grass between the terrace walk and

the wall, and a few clusters of evergreens, rising in broken masses above the line of the wall, or of climbers mantling its summit in occasional patches, will require to be skilfully introduced, otherwise the wall would seem to divorce rather than mingle with the landscape beyond.

To pass from the consideration of garden architecture, which, however seductive a topic, scarcely falls within the range of this work, I now return to the subject of architectural gardening. Its distinctive principles are a strict observance of rule; a prominent indication or exhibition of art; the maintenance of a decided harmony and connexion with the house and other architectural objects; the adoption of regular figures; the employment of rigid, formal, and exotic plants; the necessity for flat and even surfaces, with the use of terrace banks or extremely regular slopes; and the production of a conspicuous character of dignity and repose.

The proper sphere of architectural gardening is the immediate neighbourhood of the house; as an accompaniment to particular styles of architecture, especially the Italian; in connexion with detached architectural structures, as temples, plant-houses, &c. ; within the circuit of the flower garden, parterre, rose garden, &c.; in the gardens attached to a palace, mansion, or first-class villa, rather than to a small villa or cottage residence; the kitchen garden; and, where the circumstances are favourable, the town garden.

There are certain incongruities and defects which frequently attend the practice of architectural gardening, and which should be sedulously avoided. Some of these are the mixture of inharmonious styles; the use of rustic or unarchitectural ornaments, except in remote parts, and where they will not be observed as constituents of the general scene; the placing of terrace walls or other erections on a sloping bank, or where they have shelving ground immediately below them; the extension of a formal mode of treatment into the park; generally, the obtrusion of a flower garden into the view from the principal windows, unless it be on a lower level than the base of

the house; an avenue or row of trees that crosses any main line of view, or one on the summit of a hill that forms the line of horizon; a curved avenue; a ground line that is oblique to the basement of the house, on either of its chief fronts; diagonal lines of walk on lawns, or walks crossing or starting from other straight walks at any but a right angle; plants trimmed into formal or grotesque figures, unless it be the heads of standards, -plants with naturally appropriate habits, or confined in tubs, being preferable; gravel walks, in flower gardens, that are inaccessible; monograms, or very intricate patterns, in which the beds are too small to admit flowers, for parterres; and the employment of pavements, gravels, or sands, of different colours, in the place of flowers, or merely for producing variety or

contrast.

Among the most characteristic details of architectural gardening, prominence should be given to terraces; broad, flat, and conspicuous walks; extreme smoothness and polish; changes of level, effected by formal banks or walls; raised beds and sunken panels; avenues, vistas, rows of flower beds; walks and vistas terminating with some proper object, as a temple, obelisk, pillar, &c.; rectangular forms, or those in which various segments of a circle are combined; with a sunk fence and parapet wall as boundaries to a garden.

There are likewise many desirable accessories, of which a few may be noted. These are a sufficient breadth of open lawn between the house and the park; a detached flower garden, with accompanying plant-houses, glass walls, or walls for ornamental climbers, and the opportunity of looking down upon this garden from a raised terrace; a rose garden, in a retired spot, with attendant rose-house or houses for delicate sorts; a winter garden, to be filled exclusively with evergreens, the beds arranged in pattern, with a due admixture of specimens, and all the plants selected with reference to their habits and the colour of their foliage in winter; a garden for bulbs, florists' flowers, &c., in some spot which need not be made accessible during the winter; standard or fastigiate plants; plants that blend best

with architectural objects; groups or beds of plants, in which one kind or class prevails; and hedges, whether to frame and enclose scenes that it is wished to detach, or, in a diminutive state, to make borders and edgings to flower-beds and clumps.

In practically applying the principles of architectural gardening, it should be remembered that, as extreme irregularity is a merit and a beauty in most kinds of Gothic architecture, the garden accompanying it will also bear to be treated in an equally irregular manner. But, in relation to any variety of Grecian or Italian house, the garden, like the architecture, should be more distinguished by symmetry and regularity. Architectural gardening would, further, be out of place in connexion with a house inferior in design, or destitute of character and style. It is peculiarly suitable for a tame and smooth general landscape; but is quite admissible, for contrast, in a picturesque, bold, and wild region. It specially demands that everything should be good, and nicely finished; that the plants shall be of the best and most carefully selected kinds ; the grass evenly laid; the figures, and beds, and edgings of walks, neatly and accurately cut; the gravel fine and well-laid, and its smoothness (and that of the edgings) not obviously broken by gratings. The edgings, too, should all be particularly shallow, the edges of terrace banks quite square and even at the top, and the soil in the beds and clumps very slightly raised above the level of the lawn. The spaces for specimens, flower beds, and masses of shrubs should, moreover, be cut out of the flat lawn, and not have the grass curved up to them as in the more natural style of treatment. And all the lines, whether of walks or other edgings, ought to be extremely straight or regular, thoroughly well beaten and level, and the grass be very fine and smooth.

Beyond the numerous references to little points bearing on architectural gardening which have preceded the present description, and others which will follow in their proper places, it only remains, here, to submit such engravings as may assist in making what has been said, or what may yet have to be enforced, somewhat clearer to the reader. The sketch, fig. 117, portrays