much hurt to learn from the master of the place, that I might take my leave of the avenue and its romantic effects, for that a death warrant was signed.

The destruction of so many of these venerable approaches, is a fatal consequence of the present excessive horror of strait lines. Sometimes, indeed, avenues do cut through the middle of very beautiful and varied ground, with which the stiffness of their form but ill accords, and where it were greatly to be wished they had never been planted; but being there, it may often be doubtful whether they ought to be destroyed. As to saving a few of the trees, I own I never saw it done with a good effect; they always pointed out the old line, and the spot was haunted by the ghost of the departed avenue. They are, however, not unfrequently planted, where a boundary of wood approaching to a strait line was required*; and in such situations

* At a gentleman's place in Cheshire, there is an avenue of oaks situated much in the manner I have described; Mr. Brown absolutely condemned it; but it now stands,

they furnish a walk of more perfect and continued shade than any other disposition of trees, and what is of no small consequence, they do not interfere with the rest of the place. There is in this last respect an essential difference between the avenue and the belt. When from the avenue you turn either to the right or to the left, the whole country, with all its intri cacies and varieties, is open before you: but from the belt there is no escaping; it hems you in on all sides; and if you please yourself with having discovered some wild sequestered part (if such there ever be where a belt-maker has been admitted) or some new pathway, and are in the pleasing uncertainty whereabouts you are, and whither it will lead you, the belt soon appears, and the charm of expectation is over. you turn to either side, it keeps winding round you; if you break through it, it

lf

a noble monument of the triumph of the natural feelings of the owner, over the narrow and systematic ideas of a professed improver.

catches you at your return; and the idea of this distinct, unavoidable line of separation, damps all search after novelty. Far different from those magic circles of fairies and enchanters, that gave birth to splendid illusions, to the palaces and gardens of Alcina and Armida, this, like the ring of Angelica, instantly dissipates every illusion, every enchantment.

If ever a belt be allowable, it is where the house is situated in a dead flat, and in a naked ugly country; there at least it cannot injure any variety of ground, or exclude any distant prospect: it will also be the real boundary to the eye, however uniform, and any exclusion in such cases is a benefit; but where there is any play. of ground, and a descent from the house, it more completely disfigures the place than any other improvement. What most delights us in the intricacy of varied ground, of swelling knolls, and of vallies between them, retiring from the sight in different directions amidst trees or thickets,

is, that according to Hogarth's expression, it leads the eye a kind of wanton chace; this is what he calls the beauty of intricacy, and is that which distinguishes what is produced by soft winding shapes, from the more sudden and quickly-varying kind, which arises from abrupt and rugged forms. All this wanton chace, as well as the effects of more wild and picturesque intricacy, is immediately checked by any circular plantation; which never appears to retire from the eye and lose itself in the distance, never admits of partial concealments. Whatever varieties of hills and dales there may be, such a plantation must stiffly cut across them, so that the undulations, and what in seamen's language may be called the trending of the ground, cannot in that case be humoured; nor can its playful character be marked by that style of planting, which at once points out, and adds to its beautiful intricacy.

This may serve to shew how impossible it is to plan any forms of plantations that

will suit all places, however it may suit the professor's convenience to establish such a doctrine*.

I have perhaps expressed myself more strongly, and more at length than I otherwise should have done, on the subject of so paltry an invention as that of the belt, from the extreme disgust I felt at seeing its effect in a place, of which the general

There is in this respect no small degree of resemblance between the art of gardening, and that of medicine, in which, after the general principles have been acquired, the judgment lies in the application; and every case (as an eminent physician observed to me) must be considered as a special case.

This holds precisely in improving, and in both arts the quacks are alike; they have no principles, but only a few nostrums, which they apply indiscriminately to all situations, and all constitutions. Clumps and Belts, pills and drops, are distributed with equal skill; the one plants the right, and clears the left, as the other bleeds the east, and purges the west ward. The best improver or physician, is he who leaves most to nature; who watches and takes advantage of those indications which she points out when left to exert her own powers, but which, when once destroyed or suppressed by an empyric of either kind, present themselves

no more.