dress to his readers, the translator indulges in a slight but pleasing retrospect of what taste and genius had contributed toward the praise and the improvement of his favourite art, observing that the amateur in landscape "will admire, but without regret, the few faint touches etched by HOMER, and by VIRGIL : he will view and pass the luxurious, but fantastic recess of PLINY, to approve, to feel, to envy, the better taste of TULLY in the shades of the more natural Tusculum: he will warm and enrich his imagination with the brilliant enchantments of Tasso and ARIOSTO, with the fond fancies of CHAUCER and SPENSER, with the Paradise of MILTON: he will correct his judgment with the critical lessons of BACON, of TEMPLE, and of POPE, with the various designs of WATELET and MOREL, with the chaste touches of MASON, and the judicious illustrations of BURGH. Thus, with a mind taught to admire, and willing to imitate the fair forms of genuine nature, he will ever follow obedient to the Genius of the Place,' and, as situation may suggest, either walk with the cautious KENT, or tread the fairy footsteps of BROWN."

In this birds-eye view of the progress of his art, the translator has omitted two writers whose influence on the improvement of landscape gardening had been of the most marked and decided kind, namely, WHATELY and GIRARDIN. The former in his "Observations on Modern Gardening," published in 1770, had exhibited, together with a taste singularly pure and correct, the most exquisite talents for delineating (for the embellishment of rural scenery,) its varied features and effect; whilst the latter, in his essay "De la Composition des Paysages, ou des Moyens d'embellir la Nature autour des Habitations, en. joignant l'agréable à l'utile, &c." first printed in 1777, and translated by Mr. Malthus, with an admirable introduction in 1783, and which so beautifully describes his own romantic creation at Ermenonville, had proved how effectively he could transfer to unimproved nature the finest. conceptions of the great masters of painting, and with what eloquence he could describe their result.

It may be remarked, that at the time when: the paragraph we are commenting upon was written, Brown was in the zenith of his reputa

tion, and had, but a very few years before, received from the pen of Mason an eulogy which the lapse of half a century has shown to have been written more in the spirit of poetry than of prophecy. We meet with it at the close of his interesting review of the progress of gardening in England, where, after mentioning Shenstone,

Who knew, perchance, to harmonize his shades
Still softer than his song,

he adds,

Him too, the living leader of thy powers,
Great Nature! him the Muse shall hail in notes
Which antedate the praise true Genius claims
From just posterity: bards yet unborn
Shall pay to BROWN that tribute, fitliest paid
In strains, the beauty of his scenes inspire.

Brown, who had been brought up a kitchen gardener near Woodstock, and had been afterwards head-gardener at Stowe until the year 1750, was, without doubt a man of considerable talents, as his Blenheim has amply proved; but he was deficient in a knowledge of picturesque

beauty; and the result was, that he became too much of a mannerist, and when his system of belting and clumping had fallen into the hands of a herd of imitators, nothing could be more monotonous and insipid than the scenery which was daily creating from one end of the kingdom to the other; the two great agents, wood and water, which should naturally have produced a never-ceasing variety, being now seen only under prescribed forms, the former presenting but the belt, the clump, or the single tree, and the latter assuming, however different might be the situation, one uniform shape and character.

Such a system, it is evident, could not last long; for though it was upheld for a time by the ingenuity and resources of Humphrey Repton, who used to term Brown "his great selftaught predecessor," it fell, about the year 1794, before the attack of Payne Knight, and Uvedale Price, the former in his "Landscape, a Poem," and the latter in his "Essays on the Picturesque,” endeavouring to establish the art of landscape gardening on the principles of painting, "not," as Price justly observed, "to the exclusion of nature, but as an assistant in the study of her works."

Nothing, certainly, could be better adapted to introduce the variety and the freedom which were now so much wanted in the art, than the plan thus recommended, provided it were adopted with a due attention to congruity and utility; and its influence, in fact, on the public mind soon became such, as, though opposed at first by nearly all the disciples of Brown, and especially by Repton, who entered into a public controversy with Price on the subject, it speedily effected a very desirable change in the aspect of our decorated scenery, and even finally brought over its warmest opponents; the latter works of Repton, who continued to publish until 1817, partaking much more of what might entitle him to be considered a disciple of Price than of his former venerated master.

The study, however, of the finest artists in landscape painting, of Rosa, Ruysdale, Poussin, and Claude, with a view to the transference of their beauties to living scenery, must, unless under the guidance of a correct judgment, and great good sense, often produce a display of wild, fantastic, and discordant parts, tenfold more disgusting than even the monotonous out