ON THE

PICTURESQUE, &c.

THERE is no country, I believe (if we except China) where the art of laying out grounds is so much cultivated as it now is in England. Formerly the decorations near the house were infinitely more magnificent and expensive than they are at present; but the embellishments of what are called the grounds, and of all the extensive scenery round the place, were much less attended to; and, in general, the park, with all its timber and thickets, was left in a state of picturesque neglect. As these em

bellishments are now extended over a whole district, and as they give a new and peculiar character to the general face of the country, it is well worth considering whether they give a natural and a beautiful one, and whether the present system of improving (to use a short though often an inaccurate term) is founded on any just principles of taste.

In order to examine this question, the first enquiry will naturally be, whether there is any standard, to which in point of grouping and of general composition, works of this sort can be referred; any authority higher than that of the persons who have gained the most general and popular reputation by those works, and whose method of conducting them has had the most extensive influence on the general taste? I think there is a standard; there are authorities of an infinitely higher kind; the authorities of those great artists who have most diligently studied the beauties of nature, both in their grandest and most general effects, and in their

minutest detail; who have observed every variety of form and of colour; have been able to select and combine, and then, by the magic of their art, to fix upon the canvas all these various beauties.

But, however highly I may think of the art of painting, compared with that of improving, nothing can be farther from my intention (and I wish to impress it in the strongest manner on the reader's mind) than to recommend the study of pictures in preference to that of nature, much less to the exclusion of it. Whoever studies art alone, will have a narrow pedantic manner of considering all objects, and of referring them solely to the minute and. practical purposes of that art, whatever it be, to which his attention has been particularly directed: of this Mr. Brown's followers afford a very striking example; and if it be right that every thing should be referred to art, at least let it be refer red to one, whose variety, compared to the monotony of what is called improvement, appears infinite, but which again

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falls as short of the boundless variety of the mistress of all art.

The use, therefore, of studying pictures, is not merely to make us acquainted with the combinations and effects that are contained in them, but to guide us, by means of those general heads (as they may be called) of composition, in our search of the numberless and untouched varieties and beauties of nature; for as he who studies art only will have a confined taste, so he who looks at nature only, will have a vague and unsettled one; and in this more extended sense I shall interpret the Italian proverb, “Chi s'insegna, ha un pazzo per maestro: He is a fool who does not profit by the experience of others."

We are therefore to profit by the experience contained in pictures, but not to content ourselves with that experience only; nor are we to consider even those of the highest class as absolute and infallible standards, but as the best and the only standards we have; as compositions, which, like those of the great classical authors, have

been consecrated by long uninterrupted admiration, and which therefore have a similar claim to influence our judgment, and to form our taste in all that is within their province. These are the reasons for studying copies of nature, though the original is before us, that we may not lose the benefit of what is of such great moment in all arts and sciences, the accumulated experience of past ages; and with respect to the art of improving, we may look upon pictures as a set of experiments of the different ways in which trees, buildings, water, &c. may be disposed, grouped, and accompanied, in the most beautiful and striking manner, and in every style, from the most simple and rural, to the grandest and most ornamental. Many of those objects, that are scarcely marked as they lie scattered over the face of nature, when brought together in the compass of a small space of canvas are forcibly impressed upon the eye, which by that means learns how to separate, to select, and combine.