Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/84

72 All buildings are, of course, to be considered in connexion with the country in which they are to be raised. Now, all landscape must possess one out of four distinct characters.

It must be either woody, the green country; cultivated, the blue country; wild, the grey country; or hilly, the brown country.

1. The Woody, or green, Country. By this is to be understood the mixture of park, pasture, and variegated forest, which is only to be seen in temperate climates, and in those parts of a kingdom which have not often changed proprietors, but have remained in unproductive beauty (or at least, furnishing timber only), the garden of the wealthier population. It is to be seen in no other country, perhaps, so well as in England. In other districts, we find extensive masses of black forest, but not the mixture of sunny glade, and various foliage, and dewy sward, which we meet with in the richer park districts of England. This kind of country is always surgy, oceanic, and massy, in its outline; it never affords blue distances, unless seen from a height; and, even then, the nearer groups are large, and draw away the attention from the background. The under soil is kept cool by the shade, and its vegetation rich; so that the prevailing colour, except for a few days at the fall of the leaf, is a fresh green. A good example of this kind of country is the view from Richmond Hill.

Now, first, let us consider what sort of feeling this