work by general receipts; such as clumps, belts, and ferpentine canals with uniformly levelled banks, fo long as their employers are kind enough to be fatisfied with them; and I will own, that fhould my Effay have the influence, which, as a very zealous author, I must wish, though I do not expect it to have, many an honeft profeffor of improvement muft, for want of education, feek his bread in fome other way.

You allow that the drive through fuch belts is tedious, and that the dulnefs encreases with its length: their infides are therefore condemned. What then is the effect of their outfides with refpect to the general landfcape? which, after all, ought to have fome weight with the landscape-gardener. They prefent one confpicuous, uniform, unvaried fcreen; meagre and drawn up, and differing in character from all that is on either fide of it; in reality, a gigantic hedge, that

wants

wants to be hidden, as much, or more than the fence it hides. Obferve the difference of those accidental screens to many of the old parks, where thickets of thorns and hollies, groups, and fingle trees are continued quite to the wall, or the pales; and where, till you fee the boundary, (which, however, from its moffes and ivy is at least a very picturefque object) you might fuppofe yourfelf near the center, not at the extremity of the park. These furely are the screens which ought to be imitated by landscapegardeners, for they accord with the rest of the fcenery, and at every ftep form landfcapes; and where perfect concealment is the object, they are best calculated to produce it without discovering the intention. Still, however, if the owner fays, I do not care about landscape and variety, I like uniformity and continued fhade, he is quite in the right to please himself, though it may be dull

to others; it answers his purpose, and a very good one; but let not two fuch diftinct ideas, as convenience and beauty, be confounded.

The belt you have fo accurately described, "of one uniform breadth, with a drive as "uniform, ferpentining through the middle " of it," is, I believe, what, with little difference, has been moft generally made; and it answers perfectly to its name. But fuch a plantation as you afterwards have propofed, of "various breadths, and its outline adapted to "the natural shape of the ground," is hardly a belt, or at least is not Mr. Brown's belt, and I criticifed, what had been, not what might be, made. I am very ready to acknowledge the great fuperiority of such a belt; a fuperiority which encreases, as it grows more unlike the thing it is named from: but ftill you must excufe mẹ if I suggest (not indeed by way of strict argu

ment)

ment) that you have fhewn the dulnefs of any belt in a way which will have much more effect than any thing I have written, by presenting a much more lively image of its tirefome monotony. You, the defender of belts, can fo little bear the ideal confinement, even of your own highly improved belt, that after skirting near the edges, and looking wiftfully out of it, at laft finding an open

ing, you fairly escape from it entirely,

66

66 to

enjoy the unconfined view of distant prof

pects:" an example that, I believe, would be followed by moft perfons in the fame fituation.

It is true, that I have very earnestly and generally recommended it to gentlemen who have places, that they fhould qualify themselves for becoming their own landscape-gardeners, by one of the most pleasing and liberal of all ftudies; that of the principles of painting, the works of painters and

of nature.* This you think (perhaps with too much partiality towards profeffed improvers) might tend to fupprefs-not the profeffion-but the art itself. I cannot help thinking, that fo far from fuppreffing or injuring either, it would, on the contrary, be of great advantage to both. As to fuppreffing the art, you must recollect that there was a time when there were profeffors of eloquence; there are none now: is the art fuppreffed? Would the great orators of this day-who rival those of Greece and Rome-would they have had more variety, energy, and effect, had some profeffor taught them the routine of eloquence, its tropes and figures, and endeavoured to mould their minds to his conceptions?

Of all the arts, none is more adapted to men of liberal education, who pafs much of their time at their own country-feats, than *Effay on the Picturefque, page. 375.

landscape