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shew this plainly and strongly, and without any affected candour or reserve, it might be said to me with great reason— you assert that a knowledge of the principles of painting is the first qualification for an improver; the founder of English gardening was a professed artist, and yet you object to him!

Kent, it is true, was by profession a painter, as well as an improver; but we may learn from his example, how little a certain degree of mechanical practice will qualify its possessor, to direct the taste of a nation in either of those arts.

The most enlightened judge, both of his own art, and of all that relates to it, is a painter of a liberal and comprehensive mind, who has added extensive observation and reflection, to practical execution; and if in addition to those natural and acquired talents, he likewise possess the power of expressing his ideas clearly and forcibly in words, the most capable of enlightening others to such a rare combination we owe Sir Joshua Reynolds's dis

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courses, the most original and impressive work that ever was published on his, or possibly on any art. On the other hand, nothing so contracts the mind, as a little practical dexterity, unassisted and uncorrected by general knowledge and observation, and by a study of the great masters. An artist, whose mind has been so contracted, refers every thing to the narrow circle of his own ideas and execution, and wishes to confine within that circle all the rest of mankind*.

Before I enter into any particulars, I will make a few observations on what I look upon as the great general defect of the present system; not as opposed to the old style, which I believe, however, to have been infinitely more free from it, but con

* I remember a gentleman who played very prettily on the flute, abusing all Handel's music; and to give me every advantage, like a generous adversary, he defied me to name one good chorus of his writing. It may well be supposed that I did not accept the challenge; c'étoit bien l'embarras des richesses and indeed he was right in his own way considering them, for there is not one that would do well for bis instrument.

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sidered by itself singly, and without comparison. That defect, the greatest of all, and the most opposite to the principles of painting, is want of connection/a passion for making every thing distinct and separate. All the particular defects which I shall have occasion to notice, in some degree arise from, and tend towards this original sin.

Whoever has examined with attention the landscapes of eminent painters, must have observed how much art and study they have employed, in contriving that all the objects should have a mutual relation; that nothing should be detached in such a manner as to appear totally insulated and unconnected, but that there should be a sort of continuity throughout the whole. He must have remarked how much is effected, where the style of scenery admits of it, by their judicious use of every kind of vegetation, from the loftiest trees through all their different growths, down to the lowest plants; so that nothing should be crowded, nothing bare; no heavy uniform

masses, no meagre and frittered patches. As materials for landscape, they noticed, and often sketched, wherever they met with them, the happiest groups, whether of trees standing alone, or mixed with thickets and underwood; observing the manner in which they accorded with and displayed the character of the ground, and produced intricacy, variety, and connection. All that has just been mentioned, is as much an object of study to the improver, as to the painter: the former, indeed, though in some parts he may preserve the appearance of wildness and of neglect, in others must soften it, and in others again exchange it for the highest degree of neatness: but there is no part where a connection between the different objects is not required, or where a just degree of intricacy and enrichment would interfere with neatness. Every professor, from Kent nearly down to the present time, has proceeded on directly opposite principles: the first impression received from a place where one of them has been employed, is that of general bareness, and

particular heaviness and distinctness; indeed their dislike or neglect of enrichment, variety, intricacy, and above all of connection, is apparent throughout. Water, for instance, particularly requires enrichment; they make it totally naked: the boundaries in the same degree require variety and intricacy; they make them almost regularly circular: and lastly, as it calls for all the improver's art to give connection to the trees in the open parts, they make them completely insulated. One of their first operations is to clear away the humbler trees, those bonds of connection which the painter admires, and which the judicious improver always touches with a cautious hand; for however minute and trifling the small connecting ties and bonds of scenery may appear, they are those by which the more considerable objects in all their different arrangements are combined, and on which their balance, their contrast, and diversity, as well as union depends*.

* It would be hardly less absurd to throw out all the connecting particles in language, as unworthy of being