case be admitted. In the most polished landscape, unless Nature and simplicity lead the way, the whole will be deformed.

As a contrast to parks thus laid out in the simplicity of Nature, let us just throw our eyes over a park laid out with the formality of art. The comparison will not injure the principles we establish.

From Vauvrey, recrossing the Seine, we came to Muids. This château stands on a rising ground on the north side of it, and commands a fine prospect, having two long avenues of trees running down to the river. Adjoining to the house are pleasure gardens and a paddock, planted with timber trees in form of a star.'*

* See Ducarrel's Norman Antiq., p. 42.

SECTION III.

THE COPSE.

ROM scenes of art, let us hasten to the chief object of our pursuit, the wild scenes of Nature-the wood, the copse, the glen, and open grove. Under the term wood we include every extensive combination of forest trees in a state of Nature. All such combinations, though without the

privilege of forests, compose the same kind of scenery. The description, therefore, of such scenes will come most properly under the head of forest views, on which we shall hereafter dwell at large. At present, let us examine the smaller combinations; and first the copse.

The copse is a species of scenery composed,

R

commonly, of forest trees intermixed with brushwood, which latter is periodically cut down in twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years. In its dismantled state, therefore, nothing can be more forlorn than the copse. The area is covered with bare roots and knobs, from which the brushwood has been cut, while the forest trees intermingled among them, present their ragged stems, despoiled of all their lateral branches, which the luxuriance of the surrounding thickets had choked.

In a very short time, however, all this injury which the copse has suffered is repaired. One winter only sees its disgrace. The next summer produces luxuriant shoots; and two summers more restore it almost to perfect beauty.

It matters little of what species of wood the copse is composed, for as it seldom, at best, exhibits a scene of picturesque beauty, we rarely expect more from it than a shady sequestered path, which it generally furnishes in great perfection. It is among the luxuries of Nature to retreat into the cool recesses of the full-grown copse from the severity of a meridian sun, and be serenaded by the humming insects of the shade,

whose continuous song has a more refreshing sound than the buzzing vagrant fly, which wantons in the glare of day; and, as Milton expresses it,

'Winds her sultry horn.'

In distant landscape, the copse has seldom any effect. The beauty of wood in a distant view arises, in some degree, from its tuftings, which break and enrich the lights-but chiefly from its contrast with the plain-and from the grand shapes and forms occasioned by the retiring and advancing parts of the forest, which produce vast masses of light and shade, and give effect to the whole.

These beauties appear, rarely, in the copse. Instead of that rich and tufted bed of foliage, which the distant forest exhibits, the copse presents a meagre and unaccommodating surface. It is age which gives the tree its tufted form, and the forest its effect. A nursery of saplings pro duce it not, and the copse is little more. Nor does the intermixture of full-grown trees assist the appearance. Their clumpy heads blend ill with the spiry tops of the juniors. Neither have