acting the efforts of nature, can create and preserve perfect monotony in the banks of water.

An imitation of the most striking varieties of nature, so skilfully arranged as to pass for nature herself, would certainly be acknowledged as the highest attainment of art; for however fond of art, and even of the appearance of it some improvers seem to be, if a stranger were to mistake one of their pieces of made water for the Thames, such an error I imagine would not only be forgiven, but, notwithstanding Mr. Brown's modest apostrophe to that river,* considered as the highest compliment. Yet, strange as it must appear, no one seems to have thought of copying those circumstances which might occasion so flattering a deception: if it were proposed to any of these professors to make an artificial river without re

* "Thames! Thames! Thou wilt never forgive me." -A well known exclamation of Mr. Brown, when he was looking with rapture and exultation at one of his own canals.

gular curves*, slopes, and levelled banks, but with those characteristic beauties and negligencies, which so plainly distinguish natural rivers from all that has hitherto been done in the pretended imitations of them by art, they would, in Briggs's language, "stare like stuck pigs-do no such thing." Their talent lies another way; and if you have a real river, and will let them improve it, you will be surprised to find how soon they will make it like an artificial one; so much so, that the most critical eye could scarcely discover that its banks had not been planned by Mr. Brown, and formed by the spade and the wheel-barrow,

The lines in natural rivers, in bye roads, in the skirtings of glades of forests, have sometimes the appearance of regular curves, and seem to justify the use of them in artificial scenery; but something always saves them from such a crude degree of it. If, on a subject so very unmathematical, I might venture to use any allusion to that science, or any term drawn from it, such lines might be called picturesque asymptotes; however they may approach to regular curves, they never fall into them,

I am persuaded that a very great improvement might be made in the banks of artificial water merely by a different mode of practice, without expecting from every professor the eye, or the invention of a Poussin. Mr. Brown and his followers have indeed shewn very little invention, if it even deserve that name, and of that little they have been great œconomists; with them, walks, roads, brooks, rivers are, as it were, convertible terms: dry one of their rivers, it is a large walk or road; flood a walk or a road, it is a brook or a river, and the accompaniments, like the drone of a bagpipe, always remain the same. They do not indeed, always dam up a brook; it sometimes, though rarely, is allowed its liberty; but like animals that are suffered by the owner to run loose, it is marked as private property, by being mutilated*. If instead of having their banks regularly

* No operation in what is called improvement has such an appearance of barbarity, as that of destroying the modest retired character of a brook. I remember some burlesque lines on the treatment of Regulus by the Car

sloped and shaven, or being turned into regular pieces of water, brooks were sometimes stopped partially and to different degrees of height, and every advantage were taken of the natural beauties of their banks, a number of pleasing and varied effects might be obtained. There are often parts, where by a small degree of digging so as to lower the bottom, or of obstruction by mere earth and stones, the water would lie, as in a natural bed, under banks enriched with vegetation; by such means there would be a succession of still, and of running water; of clear reflection, and of lively motion.

These beauties are so great, and so easily obtained, that before a running stream is forced into a piece of stagnant water, the

thaginians, which perfectly describe the effect of that operation;

His eyelids they pared;

Good God how he stared!

Just so do those improvers torture a brook, by widening it, cutting away its natural fringe, and exposing it to "day's garish eye."

advantages of such an alteration ought to be very apparent: if it be determined, nothing that may compensate for such a loss should be neglected; and as the water itself can have but one uniform surface, every variety of which banks are capable, should be studied both from nature and painting, and those selected, which will best accord with the general scenery. Objects of reflection are peculiarly required, for besides their distinct beauty, they soften the cold white glare, of what is usually called a fine sheet of water; an expression which contains a very just criticism on what it seems to commend: for certainly water is far from being in its most beautiful state, when it is most like the object to which it is thus compared. Collins indeed in his Ode to Evening, has used this kind of expression with great propriety:

Where some sheety lake

Cheers the lone heath;

For water on a heath, where there are scarcely any objects of reflection, has a sheety appear