deeper and to the other a fainter tinge of color. Shenstone, with a palette much less liberally furnished, was skilful enough to produce similar effects with his variously-tinted shrubs and trees. He made the central object in his vista some temple or root-house, of a faint retiring color; planted around it trees of a diminutive size and a "blanched fady hue," such as the "almond willow" and "silver osier;" then, after a blank space, he planted another group of a deeper tinge, — trees of the average hue of the forest, such as the ash and the elm; and then, last of all, in the foreground, after another blank space, he laid down trees of deep-tinted foliage, such as the dark glossy holly, and the still darker yew. To the aërial, too, he added the linear perspective. He broadened his avenues in the foreground, and narrowed them as they receded; and the deception produced he describes—and we may well credit him, for he was not one of the easily satisfied as very remarkable. The distance seemed greatly to increase, and the grounds to broaden and extend. We may judge, from the nature of the device, of the good reason he had to be mortally wroth with members of the Lyttelton family, when, as Johnson tells us, they used to make a diversion in favor of Hagley, somewhat in danger of being eclipsed at the time, by bringing their visiters to look up his vistas from the wrong end. The picture must have been set in a wofully false light, and turned head-downwards to boot, when the distant willows waved in the foreground beside the dimly-tinted obelisk or portico, and the nearer yews and hollies rose stiff, dark, and diminutive, in an avenue that broadened as it receded, a half-dozen bowshots behind them. Hogarth's famous caricature on the false perspective of his contemporary brethren of the easel would in such a case be no caricature at all, but a truthful representation of one of Shenstone's vistas viewed from the wrong end.

Some of the other arts of the poet, are, however, as I have already had occasion to remark, still very obvious. It was one of his canons, that when "an object had been once viewed from its proper point, the foot should never travel to it by the same path which the eye had travelled over before." The visiter suddenly lost it, and then drew near obliquely. We can still see that all his pathways, in order to accommodate themselves to this canon, were covered ways, which winded through thickets and hollows. Ever and anon, whenever there was aught of interest to be seen, they emerged into the open day, like moles rising for a moment to the light, and then straightway again buried themselves from view. It was another of his canons, that "the eye should always look down upon water." Customary nature," he remarks, "made the thing a necessary requisite." "Nothing," it is added, "could be more sensibly displeasing than the breadth of flat ground," which an acquaintance, engaged, like the poet, though less successfully, in making a picture-gallery of his property, had placed "between his terrace and his lake." Now, in the Leasowes, wherever water is made to enter into the composition of the landscape, the eye looks down upon it from a commanding elevation, the visiter never feels, as he contemplates it, that he is in danger of being carried away by a flood, should an embankment give way. It was yet further one of Shenstone's canons, that "no mere slope from the one side to the other can be agreeable ground: the eye requires a balance," not, however, of the kind satirized by Pope, in which

"Each alley has its brother,

And half the platform just reflects the other ;"

but the kind of balance which the higher order of landscapepainters rarely fail to introduce into their works.

"A build

ing, for instance, on one side may be made to contrast with a group of trees, a large oak, or a rising hill, on the other." And in meet illustration of this principle, we find that all the scenes of the Leasowes are at least well balanced, though most of their central points are unluckily away: the eye never slides off the landscape, but cushions itself upon it with a sense of security and repose; and the feeling, even when one fails to trace it to its origin, is agreeable. "Whence," says the poet, "does this taste proceed, but from the love we bear to regularity in perfection? But, after all, in regard to gardens, the shape of the ground, the disposition of the trees, and the figure of the water, must be sacred to nature, and no forms must be allowed that make a discovery of art."

England has produced many greater poets than Shenstone, but she never produced a greater landscape-gardener. In at least this department he stands at the head of his class, unapproachable and apart, whether pitted against the men of his own generation, or those of the three succeeding ones. And in any province in which mind must be exerted, it is at least something to be first. The estimate of Johnson cannot fail to be familiar to almost every one. It is, however, so true in itself, and so exquisitely characteristic of stately old Samuel, that I must indulge in the quotation. "Now was excited his [Shenstone's] delight in rural pleasures, and his ambition of rural elegance. He began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful, — a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers. Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view,— to make water run where it will be heard, and to

stagnate where it will be seen,

may

to leave intervals where the

eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, -demand any great powers of mind, I will not inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen spectator think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of Nature is an innocent amusement; and some praise must be allowed, by the most supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are contending to do well."

But though England had no such landscape-gardener as Shenstone, it possessed denizens not a few who thought more highly of their own taste than of his; and so the history of the Leasowes, for the ten years that immediately succeeded his death, is a history of laborious attempts to improve what he had rendered perfect. This history we find recorded by Goldsmith in one of his less known essays. Considerable allowance must be made for the peculiar humor of the writer, and its exaggerative tendency; for no story, real or imaginary, ever lost in the hands of Goldsmith; but there is at least an air of truth about its general details. "The garden," he says, "was completely grown and finished: the marks of every art were covered up by the luxuriance of nature, the winding walks were grown dark,— the brooks assumed a natural selvage, and the rocks were covered with moss. Nothing now remained but to enjoy the beauties of the place, when the poor poet died, and his garden was obliged to be sold for the benefit of those who had contributed to its embellishment.

"The beauties of the place had now for some time been celebrated as well in prose as in verse; and all men of taste wished for so envied a spot, where every turn was marked with the poet's pencil, and every walk awakened genius and

meditation. The first purchaser was one Mr. Truepenny, a button-maker, who was possessed of three thousand pounds, and was willing also to be possessed of taste and genius.

"As the poet's ideas were for the natural wildness of the landscape, the button-maker's were for the more regular productions of art. He conceived, perhaps, that as it is a beauty in a button to be of a regular pattern, so the same regularity ought to obtain in a landscape. Be that as it will, he employed the shears to some purpose; he clipped up the hedges, cut down the gloomy walks, made vistas on the stables and hog-sties, and showed his friends that a man of true taste should always be doing.

"The next candidate for taste and genius was a captain of a ship, who bought the garden because the former possessor could find nothing more to mend; but unfortunately he had taste too. His great passion lay in building,-in making Chinese temples and cage-work summer-houses. As the place before had the appearance of retirement, and inspired meditation, he gave it a more peopled air; every turning presented a cottage or icehouse, or a temple; the garden was converted into a little city, and it only wanted inhabitants to give it the air of a village in the East Indies.

"In this manner, in less than ten years the improvement has gone through the hands of as many proprietors, who were all willing to have taste, and to show their taste too. As the place had received its best finishing from the hands of the first possessor, so every innovator only lent a hand to do mischief. Those parts which were obscure have been enlightened; those walks which led naturally have been twisted into serpentine windings. The color of the flowers of the field is not more various than the variety of tastes that have been employed here, and all in direct contradiction to the original aim of its