The view in “Vitruvius Britannicus” does more justice to Vanbrugh’s conception than does the building itself. The house is there shown with a subsidiary court on each side, one being devoted to laundries and so forth, and the other to stables. In front there was to have been a forecourt enclosed by a monumental fence with the main entrance gates on the axial line. Actually but one of the side courts was built, and the forecourt was not carried out. The road, instead of approaching the house directly opposite to the centre of the façade, thus giving the visitor a _coup d’œil_ of the whole vast composition, approaches it laterally, close to the end of one of the wings, and it is only on passing the corner of the wing that the visitor is suddenly aware at close quarters of the recessed entrance front. [Illustration: FIG. 149.--Castle Howard. View from the Mausoleum.] [Illustration: FIG. 150.--Castle Howard, Yorkshire. The Garden Front, 1702.] The one subsidiary court which was built contains the laundries, and it is in the nature of a shock to see laundry-maids at work amid surroundings almost massive enough for Diocletian himself. The lay out is of corresponding scenic magnificence. From one direction the house is approached along a far-stretching avenue, which leads up hill and down dale, then beneath a gateway in a long, symmetrically designed range of building crowned with a sturdy pyramid, and so onwards towards a lofty obelisk, the meeting-point of several roads, one of which leads to the house. The formal gardens close to the house surround a large basin, in the midst of which is Atlas bearing up the world, amid the encouragements of four huge tritons who raise great horns towards him across the water. The broad gravel walk along the garden front leads in one direction to the walled fruit gardens; in the other to a smooth grass track which slopes upwards to a copse of beeches. Curving away from this is another grass track which, passing an ordered row of lead figures, comes eventually to a classic temple. Beyond are undulating fields skirting an artificial lake, across which is flung a massive bridge which deserves, even more than that at Wilton, Walpole’s epithet of “theatric,” for it serves no purpose but to adorn the landscape. It spans a sheet of water contrived for little else than to provide the opportunity to build it. Its roadway, deep-grown in grass, leads from nowhere to nowhere. The Palladian bridge at Prior Park, near Bath, illustrated in Fig. 154, is almost an exact replica of that at Wilton.