NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. P.16,1.5. I CAN hardly think it necessary to make any ex cuse for calling Lord Orford Mr.Walpole ; it is the name by which he is best known in the literary world, and to which his writings have given a celebrity much beyond what any hereditary honour can bestow. It is more necessary, perhaps, to make an apology for the liberty I must take of canvassing with freedom many positions in his very ingenious and entertaining Treatise on Modern Gardening. That treatise is written in a very high strain of panegyric on the art of which he gives so amusing a history: mine is a direct and undisguised attack upon it. The greater his authority, the more necessary it is to combat the impression which that alone will make on most minds. I do it, however, with great deference and reluctance; for I know how difficult it is to steer between the tameness of over-caution, and the appearance of acrimony, or of want of re spect towards a person for whom I feel so much, and to whom on so many accounts it is due. But he who is warmly engaged in a cause, and has to fight against strongly-rooted opinions upheld by powerful supporters, must, if he hopes to vanquish them, take every fair advantage of his opponents, and not seem too timid and fearful of giving offence where none is intended. P. 17, 1.1. As some doubts have arisen about the meaning of the word clump, which so frequently occurs in this essay, it may not be improper to define what I mean by it. My idea of a clump, in contradistinction to a group, is, any close mass of trees of the same age and growth, totally detached from all others. I have generally supposed them to be of a round, or at least of a regalar form: their size of course must vary; and no rule can well be given when such a detached mass ceases to be a clump, and may be called a plantation. P. 25,1.22. There is frequently a resemblance, and a very happy one, between the picturesque irregularities of bye-roads, and those of brooks and rivers; just as there is a most unfortunate likeness between the regularity of gravel-walks and roads, and those of artificial rivers, where all the effects of accident have been destroyed or guarded against. An example has been given of picturesque irregularity in a road, where, from meeting with some obstruction, it branches off for a time on each side: a similar circumstance in a brook is described in the Abbé Delille's exquisite Plus loin il se separe en deux ruisseaux agiles; The whole poem indeed is full of the justest taste, the nicest discrimination, and the most brilliant imagery, and all expressed in the happiest, and most poetical style. I should think myself very ungrateful, if I did not acknowledge the very great pleasure and instruction I have received from it, and add my testimony to that I believe of every other reader. P. 27, 1. last. The use of attending to the effects of accident and neglect,which has been exemplified in trees and hollow lanes, extends to objects of much greater importance; to every species of improvement, even to the highest and most important of all, that of government. Neither improvers nor legislators will leave every thing to neglect and accident; but it certainly is wise in both, by carefully ob serving all the effects which have arisen from them, to learn how to take advantage of future changes, and above all to learn that most useful lesson, not to suppress the workings of nature, but to watch and take indications from them; for who would choose to settle in that place, or under that government, where the warnings, indications, and all the free efforts of nature, were forcibly counteracted and suppressed? P.31,1.12. The destruction of so many picturesque circumstances by the prevailing passion for levelling, is mentioned with regret in many parts of this essay: the term itself may suggest regrets and apprehensions of a more serious kind. To level, in a very usual sense of the word, means to take away all distinctions; a principle that, when made general, and brought into action by any determined improver either of grounds or governments, occasions such mischiefs, as time slowly, if ever, repairs; and which are hardly more dreaded by monarchs than painters. A good landscape is that in which all the parts are free and unconstrained, but in which, though some are prominent and highly illuminated, and others in shade and retirement; some rough, and others more smooth and polished, yet they are all necessary to the beauty, energy, effect, and harmony of the whole. I do not see how a good government can be more exactly defined; and as this definition suits every style of landscape, from the plainest and simplest to the most splendid and complicated, and excludes nothing but tameness and confusion, so it equally suits all free governments, and only excludes anarchy and despotism. It must be always remem→ bered however, that despotism is the most complete leveller; and he who clears and levels every thing round his own lofty mansion, seems to me to have very Turkish pinciples of improvement. P. 32, l. 14. Among the various ill effects occasioned by the prevailing system of making the ground every where, and in all cases smooth and even, none is more lamented by the painter than that of covering up the picturesque roots of old trees, which seem to fasten on the earth with their dragon claws. Such were those of the beech that I have mentioned with so much regret; it is even worse when the spurs of a large oak, which give to its base such a look of firmness and stability, and shew what must be the rivets beneath that enable him to defy the tempest, are completely moulded up, for the sake of bringing the whole of the ground to one exact level, or for some such paltry consideration. The trunk then loses one of the most marked and striking parts of its character, and looks like an enormous post stuck into the ground. P.57,1.15. It may appear singular that in mentioning trees of a picturesque character, I should have excepted the youg ash; for, as it is a great favourite |