been given from the most amiable motive -the fear of hurting those with whom he lived on the most friendly terms, and who had very much employed and admired Mr. Brown. Silence would, in such a work, have been a tacit condemnation ;; still worse to have "damned with faint praise" my idea may possibly be taken upon wrong grounds, but I have often admired Mr. Mason's address in so delicate a situation. Had Mr. Brown transfused into his works any thing of the taste and spirit which prevail in Mr. Mason's precepts and descriptions, he would have deserved, and might possibly have enjoyed the high honour of having those works celebrated by him and Mr. Walpole; and not have had them referred, as they have been by both, to future poets and historians.

It may, perhaps, be thought presumptu ous in an individual, who has never distinguished himself by any work that might give authority to his opinion, so boldly to condemn, what has been admired and practised by men of the most liberal taste

and education: but the force of fashion and example are well known, and few have such energy of mind, and confidence in their own principles, to think and act for themselves, in opposition to general opinion and practice. Some French writer, whose name I do not recollect, ventures to express a doubt, whether a tree waving in the wind with all its branches free and untouched, may not possibly be an object more worthy of admiration, than one cut into form in the gardens of Versailles. This bold sceptic in theory, had most probably his trees shorn like those of his sovereign.

It is equally probable that many an English gentleman may have felt deep regret, when Mr. Brown had metamorphosed some charming trout stream into a piece of water; and that many a time afterwards, when disgusted with its glare and formality he has been heavily plodding along its naked banks, he may have thought how beautifully fringed those of his little brook once had been; how it sometimes ran rapidly over the stones and shallows; and

sometimes in a narrower channel, stole silently beneath the over-hanging boughs. Many rich natural groups of trees he might remember-now thinned and rounded into clumps; many sequestered thickets which he had loved when a boy---now all open and exposed, without shade or variety; and all these sacrifices made, not to his own taste, but to the fashion of the day, and against his natural feelings.

It seems to me that there is something of patriotism in the praises which Mr. Walpole and Mr. Mason have bestowed on English gardening; and that zeal for the honour of their country, has made them, in the general view of the subject, overlook defects, which they have themselves condemned. My love for my country, is, I trust, not less ardent than theirs, but it has taken a different turn; and I feel anxious to free it from the disgrace of propagating a system, which, should it become universal, would disfigure the face of all Europe. It is my wish that a more liberal and extended idea of improvement should

prevail; that, instead of the narrow mechanical practice of a few English gardeners, the noble and varied works of the eminent painters of every age and of every country, and those of their supreme mistress Nature, should be the great models of imitation.

If a taste for drawing and painting and a knowledge of their principles, made a part of every gentleman's education; if instead of hiring a professed improver to torture his grounds after an established model, each improved his own place according to general conceptions drawn from nature and pictures, or from hints which favourite masters in painting, or favourite parts of nature suggested to him, there might in time be a great variety in the styles of improvement, and all of them with peculiar excellencies. No two painters ever saw nature with the same eyes; they tended to one point by a thousand different routes, and that makes the charm of an acquaintance with their various modes of conception and execution; but

any one of Mr. Brown's followers might say, with great truth, "we have but one idea among us."

I have always understood, that Mr. Hamilton who created Painshill, not only had studied pictures, but had studied them for the express purpose of improving real landscape. The place he created (a task of quite another difficulty from correcting, or from adding to natural scenery) fully proves the use of such a study. Among many circumstances of more striking effect, I was highly pleased with a walk, which leads through a bottom skirted with wood; and I was pleased with it, not merely from what had, but from what had not been done; it had no edges, no borders, no distinct lines of separation; nothing was done, except keeping the ground properly neat, and the communication free from any obstruction. The eye and the footsteps were equally unconfined; and if it be a high commendation to a writer or a painter, that he knows when to leave off, it is not less so to an improver.