first improver. Could the original possessor but revive, with what a sorrowful heart would he look upon his favorite spot again! He would scarcely recollect a dryad or a wood nymph of his former acquaintance; and might perhaps find himself as much a stranger in his own plantation as in the deserts of Siberia." The after history of the Leasowes is more simple. Time, as certainly as taste, though much less offensively, had been busy with seat and temple, obelisk and root-house; and it was soon found that, though the poet had planted, he had not built, for posterity. The ingenious antiquary of Wheatfield discovered in the parsonage-house garden of his village, some time about the middle of the last century, a temple of lath and plaster, which had been erected, he held, by the old Romans, and dedicated to Claudius Cæsar; but the lath and plaster of these degenerate days do not last quite so long. The progress of dilapidation was further accelerated by the active habits of occasional visiters. Young men tried their strength by setting their shoulders to the obelisks; and old women demonstrated their wisdom by carrying home pieces of the seats to their fires: a robust young fellow sent poor Mr. Somerville's urn a spinning down the hill; a vigorous iconoclast beheaded the piping fawn at a blow. There were at first large additions made to the inscriptions, of a kind which Shenstone could scarce have anticipated; but anon inscriptions and additions too began to disappear; the tablet in the dingle suddenly failed to compliment Mr. Spence; and Virgil's Grove no longer exhibited the name of Virgil. "The ruinated Priory wall" became too thoroughly a ruin; the punch-bowl was shivered on its stand; the iron ladle wrenched from beside the ferruginous spring; in short, much about the time when young Walter Scott was gloating over Dodsley, and wishing he, too, had a property of which to make a plaything, what Shenstone had built and inscribed on the Leasowes could be known but from Dodsley alone. His artificialities had perished, like the artificialities of another kind of the poets his contemporaries; and nothing survived in his more material works, as in their writings, save those delightful portions in which he had but given body and expression to the harmonies of nature. CHAPTER X. Shenstone's Verses. The singular Unhappiness of his Paradise. — English Cider. Scotch and English Dwellings contrasted. The Nailers of Hales Owen; their Politics a Century ago. — Competition of the Scotch Nailers ; unsuccessful, and why. Samuel Salt, the Hales Owen Poet. — Village Church. - Salt Works at Droitwich; their great Antiquity. — Appearance of the Village. Problem furnished by the Salt Deposits of England; various Theories. Rock Salt deemed by some a Volcanic Product; by others the Deposition of an overcharged Sea; by yet others the Produce of vast Lagoons. Leland. The Manufacture of Salt from Sea-water superseded, even in Scotland, by the Rock Salt of England. It was now near sunset, and high time that I should be leaving the Leasowes, to "take mine ease in mine inn." By the way, one of the most finished among Shenstone's lesser pieces is a paraphrase on the apophthegm of old Sir John. We find Dr. Samuel Johnson, as exhibited in the chronicle of Boswell, conning it over with meikle glee in an inn at Chapelhouse; and it was certainly no easy matter to write verse that satisfied the doctor. "To thee, fair Freedom! I retire, From flattery, cards, and dice, and din; "T is here with boundless power I reign; "I fly from pomp, I fly from plate, And choose my lodgings at an inn. “Here, waiter, take my sordid ore, Which lacqueys else might hope to win; "Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, Ere, however, quitting the grounds to buy freedom at the "Plume of Feathers," I could not avoid indulging in a natural enough reflection on the unhappiness of poor Shenstone. Never, as we may see from his letters, was there a man who enjoyed life less. He was not vicious; he had no overpowering passion to contend with; he could have had his Phillis, had he chosen to take her; his fortune, nearly three hundred a-year, should have been quite ample enough, in the reign of George the Second, to enable a single man to live, and even, with economy, to furnish a considerable surplus for making gimcracks in the Leasowes; he had many amusements, drew tastefully, had a turn, he tells us, for natural history, wrote elegant verse and very respectable prose; the noble and the gifted of the land honored him with their notice; above all, he lived in a paradise, the beauties of which no man could better appreciate; and his most serious employment, like that of our common ancestor in his unfallen state, was "to dress and to keep it." And yet, even before he had involved his affairs, and the dun came to the door, he was an unhappy man. "I have lost my road to happiness," we find him saying ere he had - he completed his thirty-fourth year. Nay, we even find him quite aware of the turning at which he had gone wrong. (6 Instead," he adds, "of pursuing the way to the fine lawns and venerable oaks which distinguish the region of happiness, I am got into the pitiful parterre-garden of amusement, and view the nobler scenes at a distance. I think I can see the road, too, that leads the better way, and can show it to others; but I have got many miles to measure back before I can get into it myself, and no kind of resolution to take a single step. My chief amusements at present are the same they have long been, and lie scattered about my farm. The French have what they call a parque ornée, — I suppose, approaching about as near to a garden as the park at Hagley. I give my place the title of a ferme ornée." Still more significant is the frightful confession embodied in the following passage, written at a still earlier period: Every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce a whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life which I foresee I shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, just as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, ‘that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.'" Amusement becomes, I am afraid, not very amusing when rendered the exclusive business of one's life. All that seems necessary in order to render fallen Adams thoroughly miserable, is just to place them in paradises, and, debarring them serious occupation, to give them full permission to make themselves as happy as they can. It was more in mercy than in wrath that the first father of the race, after his nature had become contaminated by the fall, was driven out of Eden. Well would it have been for poor Shenstone had the angel of stern necessity driven him |