did mifery, little greatnefs, and titled infamy, rifques his liberty and laft fhilling to become a man of taste and fashion. He boafts that he is a happy man, for he is a man of pleafure; he knows how to enjoy life; he profeffes the important fcience called the Scavoir Vivre. Give him the distinction which, in the littleness and blindness of his foul, he confiders as the fource of happiness and honour. Allow him his claim to taste, give him the title of a man of pleasure, and fince he infifts upon it, grant him his pretenfions to Scavoir Vivre. But at the fame time he cannot deny that he is hunted by his creditors, that he is obliged to hide himself, left he should lofe his liberty; that he is eating the bread and the meat, and wearing the clothes of those whofe children are crying for a morfel, and shivering in rags. If he has brought himself to such a state as to feel no uneafinefs, when he reflects on his embarraffment, and its confequences to others; he is a base, worthless, and degenerate wretch: but if he is uneafy, where is his happinefs? where his exalted enjoyments? how much happier had been this boaster of happiness, had he lived within the limits of reafon, duty, and his fortune, in love and unity with his own regularfamily, at his own fire-fide, beloved, trusted, refpected in the neighbourhood, afraid of no creditor or perfecution, nor of any thing else, but of doing

wrong?-He might not indeed have made a figure on the turf; he might not have had the honour of leading the fashion; but he would probably have had health, wealth, fame and peace. Many a man who is feldom feen, and never heard of, enjoys, in the filence and fecurity of a private life, all which this fublunary state can afford to fweeten the cup, and to lighten the burthen.

In things of an inferior nature, and fuch as are not immediately connected with moral conduct; the fame predilection for external appearance, and the fame neglect of folid comfort, when placed in competition with the difplay of an affected tafte, are found to prevail. Our houses are often rendered cold, fmall, and inconvenient, for the fake of preferving a regularity of external figure, or of copying the architecture of a warmer climate. Our carriages are made dangerous or incommodious, for the fake of attracting the paffenger's eye, by fomething new or fingular in their fhape, ftrength, or fabric. Our dress is fashioned in uneasy forms, and with troublesome fuperfluities, or uncomfortable defects, just as the Proteus, fashion, iffues out the capricious edicts of a variable taste. We even eat and drink, fee and hear, not according to our own appetites and fenfes, but as the prevalent tafte happens to direct. In this

refined

refined age we are all perfons of tafte, from the hair-dreffer and milliner, to the duke and duchefs. The question is, not what is right, prudent, pleafing, comfortable, but what is the taste. Hence beggarly finery, and lordly beggary.

The facrifice of comfort to tafte is visible in our modern gardens. I rejoice in the explosion of the Dutch manner. I expatiate with raptured eye. and imagination over the noble scenes created by a Kent and a Brown. But at the fame time I lament that our cold climate often renders the fublime and magnificent tafte in gardening incompatible with comfort. Winter as the poet fays, often lingers in the lap of May. How pleafing to ftep out of the house, and bask under a funny wall covered with bloom, to watch the expanfion of a rofe bud, and to fee even the humble pea and bean fhooting up with all the vigour of vernal fertility. But now the manfion-house ftands naked and forlorn. You defcend from the flight of steps. You are faluted by the rudeft breath of Eurus and Borcas. No trees, no walls, no out-houses, even the kitchen and offices fubterraneous. Not a corner to seek the genial warmth of a meridian fun. Fine profpects indeed all around. But you cannot ftay to look at them. You fly to your chimneycorner, happy if the perfecuting blaft pursues you

not

not to your last recefs. We allow all that tafte can claim. We admire and love her beauties; but they are dearly bought at the expence of comfort.

A little and inclofed garden adds greatly to the real enjoyment of a rural retreat: though tafte has thrown down the walls, and laid all open; I venture to predict, that before the lapfe of half a century, good fenfe and the love of comfort will rebuild them. The grounds beyond may ftill be laid out in the grandeft and most beautiful ftyle; but let the house ftand in the midft of a little cultivated spot, where every vegetable beauty and delicacy may be difplayed, and where the rigours of our inclement clime may be foftened with elegant inclosures. The contrast between this, which I would call the domeftic, and the other which might be named the outer garden or the grove, would produce an effect by no means unpleafing. They who have no tafte for flowers, and the thoufand beauties of an inclofed garden, are but pretenders to any kind of tafte in the graces of horticulture.

Indeed, fuch is the nature of man, we commonly advance improvement to the verge of impropriety. We now loath the idea of a ftraight line, and a regular row of trees. But let us not, in the pride of our hearts, flatter ourselves with

the

the unerring rectitude of our tafte. Many of the ancients who poffeffed the best tafte, not only in poetry and eloquence, but in arts, in painting, fculpture, architecture, were great admirers of plantations perfectly regular, and laid out in quinHowever vanity and fashion may dictate and declaim, the world will not always believe that Homer, Virgil, Cyrus, Cicero, Bacon, and were totally mistaken in their ideas of

cunxes.

Temple, horticultural beauty.

Cicero informs us, in a fine quotation from Xenophon's œconomics, that when Lyfander came to Cyrus, a prince equally diftinguished for his glorious empire and his genius, Cyrus fhewed him a piece of ground well inclofed and completely planted. After the vifitor had admired the tall and Braight trees, and the rows regularly formed in a quincunx, and the ground clear of weeds, and well cultivated, and the fweetnefs of the odours which exhaled from the flowers, he could not help expreffing his admiration, not only of the diligence, but the skill of him, by whom all this was measured and marked out; upon which Cyrus answered,

"It was

myself who measured every thing, the rows of trees are of my difpofing, the plan is mine,

and many

hand."

of the trees were planted with my own

An illuftrious pattern, which I hope our

English