A park and a garden are more nearly allied, and can therefore be accommodated to each other, without any disparagement to either. A farm loses some of its characteristic properties by the connexion, and the advantage is on the part of the garden; but a park thus bordered, retains all its own excellencies; they are only enriched, not counteracted, by the intermixture. The most perfect composition of a place that can be imagined, consists of a garden opening into a park, with a short walk through the latter to a farm, and ways along its glades to ridings in the country; but to the farm and the ridings the park is no more than a passage; and its woods and its buildings are but circumstances in their views; its scenes can be communicated only to the garden.

The affinity of the two subjects is so close, that it would be difficult to draw the exact line of separation between them: gardens have lately encroached very much both in extent and in style on the character of a park; but still there are scenes in the one, which are out of the reach of the other; the small sequestered spots which are agreeable in a garden, would be trivial in a park; and the spacious lawns which are among the noblest features of the latter, would in the former fatigue by their want of variety; even such as being of a moderate extent may be admitted into either, will seem bare and naked, if not broken in the one; and lose much of their greatness, if broken in the other. The proportion of a part to the whole, is a measure of its dimensions: it often determines the proper size for an object, as well as the space fit to be allotted to a scene; and regulates the style which ought to be assigned to either.

But whatever distinctions the extent may occasion between a park and a garden, a state of highly cultivated nature is consistent with each of their characters; and may in both be of the same kind, though in different degrees.