quantity of earth wheeled, and the nicety with which this operation was performed, I am persuaded it was in a great measure done for the sake of beauty.

The improved part of the other lane I never saw in its original state; but by what remains untouched, and by the accounts I heard, it must have afforded noble studies for a painter. The banks are higher and the trees are larger than in the other lane, and their branches, stretching from side to side,

I heard a vast deal from the gardener of the place near it, about the large ugly roots that appeared above ground, the large holes the sheep used to lie in, and the rubbish of all kinds that used to grow about them. The last possessor took care to fill up and clean, as far as his property went; and that every thing might look regular, he put, as a boundary to the road, a row of white

&

pales at the foot of the bank on each side, and on that next his house he raised a peat wall as upright as it could well stand, by way of a facing to the old bank, and in the middle of this peat wall, planted a row of laurels: this row the gardener used to cut quite flat at top, and the cattle reaching over the pales, and browsing the lower shoots within their bite, kept it as even at bottom; so that it formed one projecting lump in the middle, and had just as picturesque an appearance as a bushy wig squeezed between the hat and the cape. I should add, that these two specimens of dressed lanes are not in a distant county, but within thirty miles of London, and in a district full of expensive embellishments.

I am afraid many of my readers will think that I have been a long while getting through these lanes; but in them, in old quarries, and long neglected chalk and gravel pits, a great deal of what constitutes, and what destroys picturesque beauty, is

strongly exemplified within a small compass, and in spots easily resorted to; the causes too are as clearly marked, and may be as successfully studied, as where the higher styles of it, often mixed with the sublime, are displayed among forests, rocks, and mountains.

CHAPTER III.

THERE are few words, whose meaning has been less accurately determined than that of the word picturesque.

In general, I believe, it is applied to kind of scenery, every object, and every which has been, or might be represented with good effect in painting; just as the word beautiful (when we speak of visible nature) is applied to every object, and every kind of scenery, that in any way give pleasure to the eye; and these seem to be the significations of both words, taken in their most extended and popular sense. A

more precise and distinct idea of beauty has been given in an essay, the early splendor of which, not even the full meridian blaze of its illustrious author has been able to extinguish; but the picturesque, considered as a separate character, has never yet been accurately distinguished from the sublime, and the beautiful; though as no one has ever pretended that they are synonymous, (for it is sometimes used in contradistinction to them) such a distinction must exist.

Mr. Gilpin, from whose very ingenious and extensive observations on this subject I have received great pleasure and instruction, appears to have adopted this common acceptation, not merely as such, but as giving an exact and determinate idea of the word; for he defines picturesque objects to be those "which please from

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some quality capable of being illus"trated in painting," or, as he again

* Essay on Picturesque Beauty, page 1.