falls as short of the boundless variety of the mistress of all art.

The use, therefore, of studying pictures, is not merely to make us acquainted with the combinations and effects that are contained in them, but to guide us, by means of those general heads (as they may be called) of composition, in our search of the numberless and untouched varieties and beauties of nature; for as he who studies art only will have a confined taste, so he who looks at nature only, will have a vague and unsettled one; and in this more extended sense I shall interpret the Italian proverb, "Chi s'insegna, ha un pazzo per maestro: He is a fool who does not profit by the experience of others."

We are therefore to profit by the experience contained in pictures, but not to content ourselves with that experience only; nor are we to consider even those of the highest class as absolute and infallible standards, but as the best and the only standards we have; as compositions, which, like those of the great classical authors, have

been consecrated by long uninterrupted admiration, and which therefore have a similar claim to influence our judgment, and to form our taste in all that is within their province. These are the reasons for studying copies of nature, though the original is before us, that we may not lose the benefit of what is of such great moment in all arts and sciences, the accumulated experience of past ages; and with respect to the art of improving, we may look upon pictures as a set of experiments of the different ways in which trees, buildings, water, &c. may be disposed, grouped, and accompanied, in the most beautiful and striking manner, and in every style, from the most simple and rural, to the grandest and most ornamental. Many of those objects, that are scarcely marked as they lie scattered over the face of nature, when brought together in the compass of a small space of canvas are forcibly impressed upon the eye, which by that means learns how to separate, to select, and combine.

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Who can doubt whether Shakspeare and Fielding had not infinitely more amusement from society, in all its various views, than common observers? I believe it can be as little doubted, that the having read such authors must give any man, however acute his penetration, more enlarged views of human nature in general, as well as a more intimate acquaintance with particular characters, than he would have had from the observation of nature only; that many combinations of characters and of incidents, which might otherwise have escaped his notice, would forcibly strike him, from the recollection of scenes and passages in such writers; that in all these cases, the pleasure we receive from what passes in real life is rendered infinitely more poignant, by a resemblance to what we have read, or have seen on the stage. Such an observer will not divide what passes into scenes and chapters, and be pleased with it in proportion as it will do for a novel or a play, but he will be pleased on the same principles as Shakspeare or

Fielding would have been. The parallel that I wish to establish is very obvious: the works of genius in writing awaken and direct our attention towards many striking scenes and characters, which might otherwise escape us in real life, and the works of genius in painting point out to our notice a thousand effects and combinations of the happiest, though not of the most obvious kind, in real scenery.

Had the art of improving been cultivated for as long a time, and upon as settled principles as that of painting, and were there extant various works of genius, which, like those of the other art, had stood the test of ages (though from the great change which the growth and decay of trees must produce in the original design of the artist, this is hardly possible) there would not be the same necessity of referring and comparing the works of reality to those of imitation; but as the case stands at present, the only models of composition that approach to perfection, the only fixed and unchanging selections from the works of

nature united with those of art, are in the pictures and designs of the most eminent

masters.

But although certain happy compositions, detached from the general mass of objects and considered by themselves, have the greatest and most lasting effect both in nature and painting; and though the painter, in respect to his own art, may think of those only, and give himself no concern about the rest, he cannot do so if he be an improver as well as a painter; for he might then neglect or injure what was essential to the whole, by attending only to a part. By this we may perceive a great and obvious difference between a painter who confines himself to his own profession, and one who should add to it that of an improver: the first would only have to observe what formed a single composition or picture, which he might transfer upon his canvas: the second must consider the whole range of scenery, in which, not only the most striking pictures or compositions are to be shewn to advantage, but where