to the painter, though at first sight it seems hardly within the province of the improver-breadth and effect of light and

shade.

These are called the principles of painting, because that art has pointed them out more clearly, by separating what was most striking and well combined, from the less interesting and scattered objects of general scenery: but they are in reality the general principles on which the effect of all visible objects must depend, and to which it must be referred.

Nothing can be more directly at war with all these principles, founded as they are in truth and in nature, than the present system of laying out grounds. A painter, or whoever views objects with a painter's eye, looks with indifference, if not with disgust, at the clumps, the belts, the made water, and the eternal smoothness and sameness of a finished place. An improver, on the other hand, considers these as the most perfect embellishments, as the last finishing touches that nature

can receive from art; and consequently must think the finest composition of Claude, whom I mention as the most ornamented of all the great masters, comparatively rude and imperfect; though he probably might allow, in Mr. Brown's phrase, that it had "capabilities."

No one, I believe, has yet been daring enough to improve a picture of Claude*,

The account in Peregrine Pickle, of the gentleman who had improved Vandyke's portraits of his ancestors, used to strike me as rather outré; but I met with a similar instance some years ago, that makes it appear much less so. I was looking at a collection of pictures with Gainsborough; among the rest the housekeeper shewed us a portrait of her master, which she said was by Sir Joshua Reynolds: we both stared, for not only the touch and the colouring, but the whole style of the drapery and the general effect had no resemblance to his manner. Upon examining the housekeeper more particularly, we discovered that her master had had every thing but the facenot re-touched from the colours having faded-but totally changed, and newly composed as well as painted, by another, and, I need not add, an inferior hand.

Such a man would have felt as little scruple in making a Claude like his own place, as in making his own portrait like a scare-crow.

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or at least to acknowledge it; but I do not think it extravagant to suppose that a man, thoroughly persuaded, from his own taste, and from the authority of such a writer as Mr. Walpole, that an art unknown to every age and climate, that of creating landscapes, had advanced with mastersteps to vigorous perfection; that enough had been done to establish such a school of landscape as cannot be found in the rest of the globe; and that Milton's description of Paradise seems to have been copied from some piece of modern gardening;-that such a man, full of enthusiasm for this new art, and with little veneration for that of painting, should chuse to shew the world what Claude might have been, had he had the advantage of seeing the works of Mr. Brown. The only difference he would make between improving a picture and a real scene, would be that of employing a painter instead of a gardener.

What would more immediately strike him would be the total want of that leading feature of all modern improvements,

the clump; and of course he would order several of them to be placed in the most open and conspicuous spots, with, perhaps, here and there a patch of larches, as forming a strong contrast in shape and colour, to the Scotch firs. His eye, which had been used to see even the natural groups of trees in improved places, made as separate and clump-like as possible, would be shocked to see those of Claude: some with their stems half concealed by bushes and thickets; others standing alone, but by means of those thickets, or of detached trees, connected with other groups of various sizes and shapes. All this rubbish must be totally cleared away, the ground made every where quite smooth and level, and each group left upon the grass perfectly distinct and separate.

Having been accustomed to whiten all distant buildings, those of Claude, from the effect of his soft vapoury atmosphere, would appear to him too indistinct; the painter of course would be ordered to give them a smarter appear

ance, which might possibly be communicated to the nearer buildings also. Few modern houses or ornamental buildings are so placed among trees, and partially hidden by them, as to conceal much of the skill of the architect, or the expence of the possessor; but in Claude, not only ruins, but temples and palaces, are often so mixed with trees, that the tops overhang their balustrades, and the luxuriant branches shoot between the openings of their magnificent columns and porticos: as he would not suffer his own buildings to be so masked, neither would he those of Claude; and these luxuriant boughs, with all that obstructed a full view of them, the painter would be told to expunge, and carefully to restore the ornaments they had concealed.

The last finishing both to places and pictures is water. In Claude, it partakes of the general softness and dressed appearance of his scenes, and the accompaniments have, perhaps, less of rudeness than in any other master*; yet, compared with those of a

*One of my countrymen at Rome was observing, that the water in the Colonna Claude had rather too dressed