to be expected that those who profess to improve nature, should ever deign to become her scholars.

It may be said, however, that though he did not take this method of giving cons cealment, richness, and variety to the lower part of his plantations, and of guarding against monotony in the outline above, yet that he meant such monotony to be prevented by constant and judicious thinning; that a professor's business is to form, not to thin plantations, and that Mr. Brown ought not to be made answerable for the neglect of gardeners. But a physician would deserve very ill of his patient, who, after prescribing for the moment, should abandon him to the care of his nurse; and who in his future visits should concern himself no farther, but let the disorder take its course, till the patient was irrecoverably emaciated, and exhausted. Mr. Brown, during a long practice, frequently repeated his visits; but, as far as I have observed, the

trees in his plantations bear no mark of his attention: indeed, his clumps strongly prove his love of compactness. There is another circumstance in his plantations, which deserves to be remarked: a favourite mixture of his was that of beech and Scotch firs, in nearly equal proportion: but where unity and simplicity of character are given up, it should be for the sake of a variety that will harmonize: which two trees, so equal in size and quantity, and so strongly contrasted in form and colour, can never do *.

I have given what I thought the just

*This puts me in mind of an anecdote I heard of a person, very much used to look at objects with a painter's eye: He had three cows; when his wife, with a very proper œconomy, observed, that two were quite sufficient for their family, and desired him to part with one of them. "Lord, my dear," said he, "two cows you know can never group."

A third tree (like a third cow) might have connected and blended the discordant forms and colours of the beech and Scotch fir; but every thing I have seen of Mr. Brown's works, have convinced me that he had, in a figurative

degree of praise to Mr. Brown, for the method in which he has planted the garden scene which accompanies one part of the lake; but to judge properly of his taste and invention in the management of water, we must observe those banks with their accompaniments, which he has formed entirely himself, and that we may do without quitting Blenheim: below the cascade all is his own, and a more complete piece of monotony could hardly be furnished even from his own works. When he was no longer among shrubs and gravel walks, the gardener was quite at a loss; for his mind had never been prepared by a study of the great masters of landscape, for a more enlarged one of nature: finding, therefore, no invention, no resources within himself, he copied what he had most seen, and most admired-his own

sense, no eye; and if he had had none in the literal sense, it would have only been a private misfortune,

And partial evil, universal good.

little works; and in the same spirit in which he had magnified a parterre, he planned a gigantic gravel walk: when it was dug out, he filled it with another element, called it a river, and thought the noblest in this kingdom must be jealous of such a rival.

CONCLUDING CHAPTER.

I HAVE now gone through the principal points of modern gardening; but the observations I have made relate almost entirely to the grounds, and not to what may properly be called the garden.

As the art of gardening in this extended sense*, vies with that of painting, and has been thought likely to form a new school of painters, I think I am justified in having compared its operations and effects with those of the art it pretends to rival, nay, to instruct. These two rivals whom I am so desirous of reconciling, have hitherto been guided by very opposite principles, and the character of their productions

* A gentleman, whose taste and feeling, both for art and nature, rank as high as any nian's, was lamenting to me the extent of Mr. Brown's operations :---" Former improvers," said he, “at least kept near the house; but this fellow crawls like a snail all over the grounds, and leaves his cursed slime behind him wherever he goes."