Pope, in one of his letters to Mr. Allen, thus discovers his own generous mind:-"I am now as busy in planting for myself as I was lately in planting for another. I am pleased to think my trees will afford shade and fruit to others, when I shall want them no more." Mr. Addison's admirable recommendation of planting, forms No. 583 of the Spectator. He therein says, "When a man considers that the putting a few twigs in the ground, is doing good to one who will make his appearance in the world about fifty years hence, or that he is perhaps making one of his own descendants easy or rich, by so inconsiderable an expence; if he finds himself averse to it, he must conclude that he has a poor and base heart. Most people are of the humour of an old fellow of a college, who, when he was pressed by the society to come into something

The Noveau Dict. Hist. thus speaks of him:—“ Il vint à Paris se faire recevoir avocat. Une éloquence naturelle, cultivée avec soin, le fit briller dans le Barreau, et lui consilà l'estime des premiers magistrais. Quoi qu'il eut peu de temps dont il pût disposer, il en trouvoit néanmoins suffisament pour satisfaire la passion qu'il avoit pour l'agriculture. Il augmenta ses connoissances sur le jardinage, dans un voyage qu'il fit en Italie. De retour à Paris, il se livra tout entier à l'agriculture, et fit un grand nombre d'experiences curieuses et utiles. Le grand Prince de Conde, qui aimoit l'agriculture, prenoit une extréme plaisir à s'entretenir avec lui; et Charles II. Roi d'Angleterre lui offrit une pension considérable pour l'attacher à la culture de ses Jardins, mais il refusa ses offres avantageuses par l'amour qu'il avoit pour sa patrie, et trouva en France les recompenses due à son mérite. On a de lui un excellent livre, intitulé 'Instructions pour les Jardins Fruitiers et Potagers, Paris, 1725, 2 tom. 4to.' et plusieurs Lettres sur la meme matiere." Switzer, in his History of Gardening, says, that in Mons. de la Quintinye's "Two Voyages into England, he gained considerable friendship with several lords with whom he kept correspondence by letters till his death, and these letters, says Perrault, are all printed at London." And he afterwards says, speaking of Lord Capel's garden at Kew, "the greatest advance made by him herein, was the bringing over several sorts of fruits from France; and this noble lord we may suppose to be one that held for many years a correspondence with Mons. de la Quintinye." Such letters on such correspondence if ever printed, must be worth perusal.

that might redound to the good of their successors, grew very peevish. We are always doing, says he, something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us." Mr. Weston also published The Universal Botanist and Nursery; 1770, 1774, 4 vols. 8vo. The Gardener and Planter's Calendar, containing the Method of Raising Timber Trees, Fruit Trees, and Quicks for Hedges; with Directions for Forming and Managing a Garden every Month in the Year; also many New Improvements in the Art of Gardening; 8vo. 1773. Mr. Weston then appears to have lived at Kensington Gore. The Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1806, says, that he died at Leicester, in 1806, aged seventy-four. He was formerly a thread hosier there. It gives an amusing and full list of his various publications,

* Lamoignon de Malherbes (that excellent man) had naturalized a vast number of foreign trees, and at the age of eighty-four, saw every where, in France, (as Duleuze observes) plants of his own introduction.

The old Earl of Tweedale, in the reign of Charles II. and his immediate successor, planted more than six thousand acres, in Scotland, with fir trees. In a Tour through Scotland, in 1753, it mentions, that "The county of Aberdeen is noted for its timber, having in it upwards of five millions of fir trees, besides vast numbers of other kinds, planted within these seventy years, by the gentry at and about their seats."

Mr. Marshall, in his "Planting and Rural Ornament," states, that "In 1792, his Grace the Duke of Athol (we speak from the highest authority) was possessed of a thousand larch trees, then growing on his estates of Dunkeld and Blair only, of not less than two to four tons of timber each; and had, at that time, a million larches, of different sizes, rising rapidly on his estate."

The zeal for planting in Scotland, of late years, has been stimulated by the writings of James Anderson, and Lord Kames.

It is pleasing to transcribe the following paragraph from a newspaper of the year 1819:-"Sir Watkin Williams Wynn has planted, within the last five years, on the mountainous lands in the vicinity of Llangollen, situated from 1200 to 1400 feet above the level of the sea, 80,000 oaks, 63,000 Spanish chesnuts, 102,000 spruce firs, 110,000 Scotch firs, 90,000 larches, 30,000 wych elms, 35,000 mountain elms, 80,000 ash, and 40,000 sycamores, all

particularly of his intended "Natural History of Strawberries."

GEORGE MASON. The best edition of his "Essay on Design in Gardening," appears to have been that of 1795, in 8vo. Two Appendixes were published in 1798, which are said to have been written by Mr. U. Price. In Mr. Nichols's fourth volume of Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, are some particulars of Mr. Mason. He published Hoccleve's Poems, with a Glossary; an Answer to Thomas Paine; the Life of Lord Howe; a Supplement to Johnson's Dictionary: in the ill-tempered preface to which, he thus strangely speaks of that Dictionary:-" this muddiness of intellect sadly besmears and defaces almost every page of the composition." This is only a small instance of his virulence against Johnson in this preface. One would have thought that Mr. Mason's sarcasms would have been softened, or even subdued, by its glowing and eloquent preface, which informs us that this great work was composed "without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour." I am sorry to say, that Mr. Mason, even in the above Essay, discovers, in three instances, his animosity to our "Dictionary writer," for so he calls Dr. Johnson. Mr. Boswell, speaking of Johnson's preface, says, "We cannot contemplate without wonder, the vigorous and splendid thoughts which so highly distinguish that performance;"

of which are, at this time, in a healthy and thriving condition." It is impossible, on this subject, to avoid paying a grateful respect to the memory of that bright ornament of our church, and literature, the late Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, whose extensive plantations, near Ambleside, have long since enriched that part. The late Richard Crawshay (surpassed by no being during the whole course of his very long life, for either integrity or generosity) assured the present writer, that during an early period of Dr. Watson's planting, he offered him, on the security of his note of hand only, and to be repaid at his own entire convenience, ten thousand pounds, and that he (with grateful thanks to Mr. Crawshay) refused it.

and on the Dictionary he observes, that "the world contemplated with wonder, so stupendous a work, atchieved by one man, while other countries had thought such undertakings fit only for whole academies." Linnæus and Haller styled Ray's History of Plants, opus immensi laboris. One may justly apply the same words to this Dictionary. It was well for Mr. Mason that he escaped (what Miss Seward called) "the dead-doing broadside of Dr. Johnson's satire." George Mason omits no opportunity of censuring Mr. Whateley's Observations on Modern Gardening. In the above Essay, he censures him in seven different pages, and in his distinct chapter or division on this book of Mr. Whateley's, (consisting of thirteen pages) there are no less than thirtythree additional sneers, or faults, found with his opinions. He does not acknowledge in him one single solitary merit, except at page 191. In page 160, he nearly, if not quite, calls him a fool, and declares that vanity is the passion to which he is constantly sacrificing.* It would be an insult to any one who has read Mr. Whateley's work, to endeavour to clear him from such a virulent and ill-founded attack. Neither Dr. Johnson, with all his deep learning, nor Mr. Whateley, with all the cultivated fancy of a rich scholastic mind, would either of them have been able to comprehend, or to understand, or even to make head or tail of the first half of Mr. George Mason's poem, with which he closes the above edition of his Essay. As he has been so caustically severe against Dr. Johnson, it cannot be ungenerous if one

* How widely different has the liberal and classic mind of Dr. Alison viewed the rich pages of Mr. Whateley, in his deep and learned Essays on Taste, first published nearly twenty years after Mr. Whateley's decease. One regrets that there is no Portrait of Mr. Whateley. Of Dr. Alison, there is a masterly one by Sir Henry Raeburn, admirably engraved by W. Walker, of Edinburgh, in 1823. Perhaps it is one of the finest Portraits of the present day. One is happy to perceive marks of health expressed in his intellectually striking countenance.

applies to the above part of his own poem, the language of a French critic on another subject:—“ Le style en est dur, et scabreux. Il semble que l'auteur a ramassé les termes les plus extraordinaires pour se rendre inintelligible." Percy, Bishop of Dromore, in vol. x. page 602, of the British Critic, has given a critique of Mr. Mason's edition of Hoccleve, in which he chastises its injustice, arrogance, and ignorance. Mr. Mason has been more liberal in warmly praising Kent, and Shenstone, in acknowledging the great taste and elegance of Mr. Thomas Warton, when the latter notices Milton's line of

Bosom'd high in tufted trees,

which picturesque remark of Mr. Warton's could not have been excelled even by the nice and critical pen of the late Sir U. Price; and when he informs us, in more than one instance, of the great Earl of Chatham's "turning his mind to the embellishment of rural nature."

THOMAS WHATELEY, on whose "Observations on Modern Gardening," the Encyclopædia of Gardening (that most comprehensive assemblage of every thing delightful and curious in this art,) observes, "It is remarkable, that so little is known of a writer, the beauty of whose style, and the justness of whose taste, are universally acknowledged.” The same work further says, "his excellent book, so frequently referred to by all succeeding writers on garden scenery, ought to be in the hands of every man of taste." And the same work still further observes, that "its style has been pronounced by Ensor, inimitable, and the descriptions with which his investigations are accompanied, have been largely copied, and amply praised by Alison, in his work On Taste. The book was soon translated into the continental languages, and is judiciously praised in the Mercure de France, Journal Encyclopédique, and Weiland's Journal. G. Mason alone