pears in the description of Scylla in the Metamorphoses, and of Sin in Paradise

Lost.

As deformity consists of some striking and unnatural deviation from what is usual in the shape of the face or body, or of a similar addition to it, all lines, of whatever description they may be, will equally produce it. Mr. Burke's opinion of flowing lines as producing beauty, and of angular lines as producing ugliness, has been mentioned; and those who are of his way of thinking, must probably object to the Grecian nose as too straight, and as forming too sharp an angle with the rest of the face. Whether the Greek artists were right or not, their practice shews, that, in their opinion, straight lines, and what nearly approach to angles, were not merely compatible with beauty, but that the effect of the whole would thence be more attractive, than by a continual sweep and flow of outline in every part*.

* The application of this to modern gardening is too obvious to be enforced. It is the highest of all authority against

The symmetry and proportion of hills and mountains, are not marked out and ascertained like those of the human figure; but the general principles of beauty and ugliness, of picturesqueness and deformity, are easily to be traced in them, though not in so striking and obvious a manner.

Those hills and mountains which nearly approach to angles, are often called beautiful; seldom, I believe, ugly: and when their size and colour are diminished and softened by distance, they accord with the softest and most pleasing scenes, and compose the distance of some of Claude's most polished landscapes. The ugliest forms of hills, if my ideas be just, are those which are lumpish, and, as it were, unformed; such, for instance, as from one of the ugliest and most shapeless animals are called pigbacked. When the summits of any of these are notched into paltry divisions, or have such insignificant risings upon them as appear like knobs or bumps;

continued flow of outline, even where beauty of form is the only object.

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or when any improver has imitated those knobs or knotches, by means of patches and clumps, they are then both ugly and deformed.

The ugliest ground is that which has neither the beauty of smoothness, verdure, and gentle undulation, nor the picturesqueness of bold and sudden breaks, and varied tints of soil: of such kind is ground that has been disturbed, and left in that unfinished state; as in a rough ploughed field run to sward. Such also are the slimy shores of a flat tide river, or the sides of a mountain stream in summer, composed merely of loose stones, uniformly continued, without any mould or vegetation. The steep shores of rivers, where the tide rises at times to a great height, and leaves promontories of slime; and those on which torrents among the mountains leave huge shapeless heaps of stones, may certainly lay claim to some mixture of deformity; which is often mistaken for another character. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to hear persons who come from a

VOL. I.

tame cultivated country (and not those only) mistake barrenness, desolation, and deformity, for grandeur and picturesque

ness.*

Deformity in ground, is indeed less obvious than in other objects: deformity seems to be something that did not originally belong to the object in which it exists; something strikingly and unnaturally disagreeable, and not softened by those cir

* It might be supposed, on the other hand, that the being continually among picturesque scenes, would of itself, and without any assistance from pictures, lead to a distinguishing taste for them. Unfortunately it often leads to a perfect indifference for that style, and to a preference for something directly opposite.

I once walked over a very romantic place, in Wales, with the proprietor, and strongly expressed how much I was struck with it, and among the rest, with several natural cascades. He was quite uneasy at the pleasure I felt, and seemed afraid I should waste my admiration. "Don't stop at these things," said he, " I will shew you by and by one worth seeing." At last we came to a part where the brook was conducted down three long steps of hewn stone: "There,” said he, with great triumph, " that was made by Edwards, who built Pont y pridd, and it is reckoned as neat a piece of mason-work as any in the country."

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cumstances which often make it picturesque. The side of a smooth green hill, torn by floods, may at first very properly be called deformed; and on the same principle, though not with the same impression, as a gash on a living animal. When the rawness of such a gash in the ground is softened, and in part concealed and ornamented by the effects of time, and the progress vegetation, deformity, by this usual process, is converted into picturesqueness; and this is the case with quarries, gravel-pits, &c. which at first are deformities, and which in their most picturesque state, are often considered as such by a levelling improver. Large heaps of mould or stones, when they appear strongly, and without any connec tion or concealment above the surface of the ground, may also at first be considered as deformities, and may equally become picturesque by the same process.

This connection between picturesqueness and deformity cannot be too much studied by improvers, and among other reasons, from motives of œconomy. There are in