many places deep hollows and broken ground not immediately in view, which do not interfere with any sweep of lawn necessary to be kept open: to fill up and level these, would often be difficult and expensive; to dress and adorn them, costs little trouble, or money. Even in the most smooth and polished scenes, they may often be so masked by plantations, and so united with them, as to blend with the general scenery at a distance, and to produce great novelty and variety when approached.

The same distinctions which have been remarked in other objects, are equally observable in trees. The ugliest, are not those in which the branches, whether from nature or accident, make sudden angles, but such as are shapeless from having been long pressed by others, or from having been regularly and repeatedly stripped of their boughs before they were allowed to grow on. Trees that are torn by winds, or shattered by lightning, are deformed, and at first very strikingly so; and as the crude

ness of such deformity is gradually softened by new boughs and foliage, they often become in a high degree picturesque.

In buildings and other artificial objects, the same principles operate in the same manner. The ugliest buildings are those which have no feature, no character; those, in short, which most nearly approach to the shape, "if shape it may be called," of a clamp of brick, the ugliness of which no one will dispute. It is melancholy to reflect on the number of houses in this kingdom that seem to have been built on that model; and if they are less ugly, it is chiefly owing to the sharpness of their angles, and to their having, on that account, something more of a decided and finished form. The term which most expresses what is shapeless, is that of a lump and it generally indicates what is detached from other objects, what is without any variation of parts in itself, or any material difference in length, breadth, or height; a sort of equality that appears best to accord with the monotony of ugliness, Still, however,

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as what is most conspicuous, has the most extensive influence whether in good or in bad, a tall building, cæteris paribus, may perhaps contend for the palm of ugliness. When I consider the striking natural beauties of such a river as that at Matlock, and the effect of the seven-story buildings that have been raised there, and on other beautiful streams, for cotton manufactories, I am inclined to think that nothing can equal them for the purpose of dis-beautifying an enchanting piece of scenery; and that œconomy had produced, what the greatest ingenuity, if a prize were given for ugliness, could not surpass. They are so placed, that they contaminate the most interesting views; and so tall, that there is no escaping from them in any part and in that respect they have the same unfortunate advantage over a

squat building, that a stripped elm has over a pollard willow. As in buildings there is no general or usual form, to which, as in the human race, we can refer, defor mity is in them not so immediately obvious. Many buildings are erected, and then

added to, as more space was wanted, without any plan: in others, the same kind of irregularity is originally designed; and all these an admirer of pure architecture would probably condemn as deformed, though they are in general considered as only irregular. Where, however, the architecture is regular, if any part be taken away so as to interrupt the symmetry, or any thing added that has no connection with its character, the building is manifestly deformed. I have here supposed that the building, whether a part be taken away, or a part added, is left in an entire and finished state, and that the deformity solely arises from the destruction of its symmetry; for any breach or chasm in a finished building, whether regular or irregular, must always be a deformity. Ruins, therefore, of all kinds, are at first deformed; and after wards, by means of vegetation and of various effects of time and accident, become picturesque.

With respect to colours, it appears to me that as transparency is one essential quali

ty of beauty, so the want of transparency, or what may be termed muddiness, is the most general and efficient cause of ugliness. A colour, for instance, may be harsh, glaring, tawdry, yet please many eyes, and by some be called beautiful: but a muddy colour, no one ever was pleased with, or honoured with that title. If this idea be just, there seems to be as much analogy between the causes of ugliness in colour, and in form, as the two cases could well admit; in the first, ugliness is said to arise from the thickening of what should be pure and transparent; in the second, from clogging and filling up those nicely marked variations, of which beauty and purity of outline are the result. It is hardly necessary to say, that I have here been speaking of colours as considered separately; not of those numberless beauties and effects, which are produced by their numberless connections and oppositions.

Ugliness, like beauty, has no prominent features it is in some degree regular and uniform; and at a distance, and even on a