## FRAGMENT XXV.

### A PLAN EXPLAINED.

I have frequently observed, that those who perfectly understand a Drawing in Perspective, have sometimes no idea of a Plan or Map, and are not ashamed to confess they do not understand either. I will therefore avail myself of the following letter, addressed to a Lady; and I trust the difficulty will be removed, by referring to the Plate, which gives an example of both the Map of a Garden and the Ground Plan of a House and its appendages.

#### TO LADY ****

MADAM,

As you have confessed to me that you never could understand a Plan, I will endeavour to remove your difficulties, by a reference to the one annexed. We must begin by supposing that the embroidery at the corner is a pattern for a Flower-Garden, the blue patch in the middle is a fountain, the basin of which is about ten feet wide; the orange lines are gravel walks; the little patches of red and green represent roses and other flowers in beds or baskets, standing on the neatest mown grass;

and the four circles may be berceaux, with hoops to support creepers, or they may be grass plots with vases or statues. I am aware that this will cause some alarm to those who fancy all NATURE at variance with ART, and who will exclaim, that it is going back to the old fashioned formal gardening of former days: I answer by reminding them, that I am not now describing a Landscape, but a Garden; and "A GARDEN IS A WORK OF ART, USING THE MATERIALS OF NATURE."

Among the infinite variety of flowers which adorn the Garden, there are some so minute, that they require being lifted from the ground to meet the eye, and some so formed, that they should be raised even above the eye, to shew their beauties (such as the Fuscia, the Meadea, and other pendulous plants): to provide for these, we will suppose four beds of fossils or flints, or rocky fragments, for the reception of that interesting class of plants, which requires such a soil and situation: these are described on the Plan by purple and yellow. As occasional spray from a fountain might wet the gravel walk, it should be neatly paved with pebbles round the basin.

On that side of the Flower Garden which fronts towards the south, is a house for peaches and strawberries. On the side opposite, and in some degree corresponding, is a row of posts with hoops to train creepers, and an architectural gate communicating with the park, betwixt two projecting lines of shrubbery, which are meant to consist of every kind of thorns, towards the park to the south, and American plants towards the garden to the north. This attention to north and south is very essen-