sometimes in a narrower channel, stole silently beneath the over-hanging boughs. Many rich natural groups of trees he might remember now thinned and rounded into clumps; many sequestered thickets which he had loved when a boy---now all open and exposed, without shade or variety; and all these sacrifices made, not to his own taste, but to the fashion of the day, and against his natural feelings.

It seems to me that there is something of patriotism in the praises which Mr. Walpole and Mr. Mason have bestowed on English gardening; and that zeal for the honour of their country, has made them, in the general view of the subject, overlook defects, which they have themselves condemned. My love for my country, is, I trust, not less ardent than theirs, but it has taken a different turn; and I feel anxious to free it from the disgrace of propa gating a system, which, should it become universal, would disfigure the face of all Europe. It is my wish that a more liberal and extended idea of improvement should

prevail; that, instead of the narrow mechanical practice of a few English gardeners, the noble and varied works of the eminent painters of every age and of every country, and those of their supreme mistress Nature, should be the great models of imitation.

If a taste for drawing and painting and a knowledge of their principles, made a part of every gentleman's education; if instead of hiring a professed improver to torture his grounds after an established model, each improved his own place according to general conceptions drawn from nature and pictures, or from hints which favourite masters in painting, or favourite parts of nature suggested to him, there might in time be a great variety in the styles of improvement, and all of them with peculiar excellencies. No two painters ever saw nature with the same eyes; they tended to one point by a thousand different routes, and that makes the charm of an acquaintance with their various modes of conception and execution; but

any one of Mr. Brown's followers might say, with great truth, "we have but one idea among us."

I have always understood, that Mr. Hamilton who created Painshill, not only had studied pictures, but had studied them for the express purpose of improving real landscape. The place he created (a task of quite another difficulty from correcting, or from adding to natural scenery) fully proves the use of such a study. Among many circumstances of more striking effect, I was highly pleased with a walk, which leads through a bottom skirted with wood; and I was pleased with it, not merely from what had, but from what had not been done; it had no edges, no borders, no distinct lines of separation; nothing was done, except keeping the ground properly neat, and the communication free from any obstruction. The eye and the footsteps were equally unconfined; and if it be a high commendation to a writer or a painter, that he knows when to leave off, it is not less so to an improver.

This, and other parts of Painshill seem to have been formed on the precept contained in the well-known lines of Tasso, in his description of the garden of Armida :

E quel che'l bello e'l caro accresce a l'opre,
L'arte che tutto fa, nulla si scopre.

Mr. Hamilton, however, is one of the very few who have profited by it: for although no precept be more generally admitted in theory than that of concealing the art which is employed, none has been less observed in practice. It is true, however, that it must not be too strictly followed in all cases; and that like other excellent rules, it has its exceptions. Every thing that belongs to buildings and architecture is manifestly artificial, and the concealment of art entirely out of the question: whatever therefore is connected with the mansion, should display a degree of art and of ornament, in proportion to its style and character; and I own my regret, that all the old decorations have been banished from an affectation of simplicity, and what

is called nature. It is obvious on the same principle, that all roads, walks, and communications immediately connected with the house, should be completely regular and uniform; and where a more extended part, as at Blenheim, is richly dressed with shrubs and exotics, and kept in the highest state of polished neatness, a regular walk of the same high polish is perfectly in character: but in other parts, not solely the more distant, but wherever there is any thing of natural wildness and intricacy in the scene, the improver should conceal himself like a judicious author, who sets his reader's imagination at work, while he seems not to be guiding, but exploring with him some new region. Among the numberless excellencies of Homer it is not the least, that he scarcely ever appears in his own person: you are engaged amidst the most interesting and striking scenes, and are carried on from one to another in such a manner, as to be totally unconscious of the consummate skill with which your route has been prepared and his