lines of Brown; and such, indeed, has not unfrequently been the case; for, where it has been forgotten that grounds should be laid out not exclusively with a view to pictorial effect, but with a direct reference in many of their features to the personal use, and comfort, and enjoyment of the proprietor, what but affectation and inaccordancy must ensue? In fact, it should be ever held in mind, that the grounds immediately adjoining the mansion should, in a greater or less degree, partake of the style and character of its age and architecture. If the house be an old one, or built to assume the appearance of antiquity, assuredly a correct taste would preserve, or create, around it a style of gardening correspondent with its time-worn aspect; and the avenue, the alley, the terrace, and parterre, would here find their proper place; whilst, if the character of the country should admit of it, the more distant parts of the domain, where nature is expected to be perfectly free from control, might exhibit all that a picturesque imagination could conceive and execute ;

All that Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue, Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew.

If, on the contrary, the mansion be in the modern style of architecture, still the homegrounds, whilst they partake of the more free, cheerful, and disengaged character of the building, should exhibit, though without any offensive intrusion of art, evident traces of their adaptation to the pleasures and comforts of domestic life. Harmony, therefore, and softness, and a certain degree of regular beauty, though not unmingled with the charms of a varying outline, should be studied here, and not picturesque effect; this, as in the former instance, being reserved for scenery less immediately connected with the business and the pursuits of man. It is this want of attention to propriety, to the beauty resulting from adaptation, utility, and a due subserviency to the purposes of habitation, which has rendered so many attempts towards creating picturesque effect not only extravagant, but ridiculous; and which occasioned Dugald Stewart, several years ago, to observe, in relation to the new system of Messrs. Knight and Price: "As to the application of the knowledge acquired from the study of paintings, to the improvement of natural landscape, I have

no doubt, that to a superior understanding and taste, like those of Price, it may often suggest very useful hints; but if recognised as the standard to which the ultimate appeal is to be made, it would infallibly cover the face of the country with a new and systematical species of affectation, not less remote than that of Brown, from the style of gardening which he wishes to recommend ;" and he then adds, in a vein of good sense which should never be forgotten, "Let painting be allowed its due praise in quickening our attention to the beauties of nature; in multiplying our resources for their farther embellishment; and in holding up a standard, from age to age, to correct the caprices of fashionable innovations; but let our taste for these beauties be chiefly formed on the study of nature herself; nor let us ever forget so far what is due to her indisputable and salutary prerogative, as to attempt an encroachment upon it by laws, which derive the whole of their validity from her own sanction."

Fortunately a taste for the study of nature, as she is to be seen in this country, under all her most pleasing and picturesque forms, had

been established in the public mind just anterior to the introduction of the system of Price, and principally through the efforts of Gilpin, whose numerous picturesque tours had not only rendered every well-educated man familiar with the principles of landscape-painting, but had induced all who possessed the means and the opportunity, to visit the scenes which he had so admirably described, and to study nature for themselves at the fountain head; a fashion, which whilst it precluded the probability of any extensive return to the formal, insipid, and indiscriminate arrangements of the followers of Brown, men totally devoid of the inventive talents of their master, secured, at the same time, such a sincere and just admiration of the great archetype of all beauty and sublimity, as to prevent any very frequent or injurious submission to the caprices of art and the dictates of mannerism painting being only so far adopted as a guide, as she has shown, through the medium of her best artists, the rare attainment of selecting, grouping and combining happily, from the varied stores around her. It is exclusively to this mode of deriving assistance from the sister art,

that our two didactic poets on landscape gardening most emphatically point; at the same time ever holding up to view the grand truth, that the rules which they, after the example of the great masters of the pencil have found it requisite to adopt, have been primarily dictated, and occasionally carried into execution, by Nature herself. Thus De Lille in reference to this very characteristic of genius in the schools of painting, tells his aspirant to fame in the art of embellishing living scenery,

Ainsi savoient choisir les Berghems, les Poussins.
Voyez, étudiez leurs chefs-d'œuvres divins:

Et ce qu'à la campagne emprunta la peinture,
Que l'art reconnoissant le rende à la nature.

Chant i..

and Mason still more minutely and explicitly:

If yet thy art be dubious how to treat
Nature's neglected features, turn thy eye
To those, the masters of correct design,

Who, from her vast variety, have cull'd
The loveliest, boldest parts, and new arranged;
Yet, as herself approv'd, herself inspired.

In their immortal works thou ne'er shalt find