land, gorse-clad heath, and open down. The inhabitants of our great and growing cities-growing, unfortunately, at the expense of what God made— the country'-now thirst, as they never thirsted before, for green winding lane and sylvan glade, and, in the joyous holiday seasons, turn from the dry, hot air of the street to the breezy field-path with a yearning which was never before experienced in the same degree.

But long anterior-as we have seen-to the existence of that public feeling, created and strengthened by the action of those worse than modern vandals-men who have ruthlessly destroyed what have been beautifully and appropriately called the buildings of God'-buildings which, once levelled with the ground, no human art can restore-and long before a sense of deprivation began to deepen public interest in our wild woods and open commons, the public mind was attracted to the subject by the quiet charm and the all-pervading simplicity of Gilpin's writings. The success of these writings, therefore, in the absence of any immediately exciting cause, can be attributed only and solely to their intrinsic merit.

The first publication (in London) of the most famous of Gilpin's works, under the title of Remarks on Forest Scenery and other Woodland Views (relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty),' took place in 1791. But Gilpin informs us that he had written the manuscript of this work ten years before that date. It was printed for R. Blamire, Strand.' A Second Edition, by the same publisher, appeared in 1794. Gilpin died in 1804, but a Third Edition of the Forest Scenery' appeared in 1808, and the publishers of this edition. were T. Cadell and W. Davies, of the Strand.

Twenty-six years afterwards, namely, in 1834, a New Edition, with notes, was published by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart. But, by a strange inadvertence, this Edition was printed from the text of the original Edition of 1791, and the Editor was, evidently, unaware that Gilpin had thoroughly revised the first issue, and had made important alterations in and additions to the work, most of which appeared in the Second Edition of 1794. Though he died four years before the publication of the Third Edition, he had made some alterations in the work subsequently to 1794, and

these duly appeared in 1808.* It is known that he was most careful to re-read and correct his writings; for he states that, in the course of the ten years during which he kept the manuscript of his 'Forest Scenery,' it received 'frequent revisal.' The fact that Sir Thomas Dick Lauder omitted the whole of the additions and corrections made by Gilpin greatly detracts, unfortunately, from the value of his Edition, which is, moreover, overloaded with notes, many of which, though in some degree relevant to the subject-matter of Gilpin's work, are altogether uncalled for, and, in consequence, make constant and unseasonable interruption in the pleasant flow of the text. In the Edition of 1834, in fact, it is not so much Gilpin as Lauder who is prominent throughout, and a considerable portion of the Editor's notes is taken up with a descriptive enumeration of trees, which would have been more in place in a horticultural handbook than amongst the pages of the delightful Author of the Forest Scenery.' In many essential points, too, in Lauder's Edition, no

We learn from Mr. Garnett that the edition of 1808 is not in the British Museum.

attempt appears to have been made to correct or explain Gilpin's statements up to the date of the new publication-the most essential part of editorial duty. Where an editor approves, he should, in most cases, be silent for his silence will pre-suppose acquiescence. This rule, however, Sir T. D. Lauder continually fails to observe; and his frequent interposition offends the reader. Nor was the First Editor of the Forest Scenery' more happy in his illustrations. He does not attempt to reproduce the charmingly-suggestive landscapes of Gilpin, or the drawings illustrating the portion of the work devoted to trees in combination, but gives, chiefly, a series of inferior wood engravings of singularly ineffective and clumsy drawings of individual trees.

6

The letter-press of the First Edition is preserved in its entirety, but the spirit and the charm of Gilpin, in all other respects, are gone.

The delightful writer on Picturesque Beauty' made no profession to be a botanist. He was an artist, with a true artist's instinctive feelings-a deep love of Nature, an intense dislike of all formality, an intuitive recognition of the beautiful harmony prevailing in the natural world, together

with a keen perception of the picturesqueness produced by the suggestive as well as by the apparent beauty of natural objects.

But, ere we say more of our Author's work, we must say something of the man himself; and, for the materials for the brief account (which follows) of his life, we are indebted to a Memoir' of him, written by An Admirer of his character and works,' and published in 1851-at Lymington, by W. L. Galpine, and, in London, by Hamilton and Adams. This memoir only professes to give an outline of Gilpin's life, and it naturally expresses regret that materials for a fuller biography were not easily accessible, owing, mainly, to the fact that the Author of the Forest Scenery' never kept a diary, nor left any papers behind him from which interesting particulars could be gathered of himself.' Here, however, as we have said, we purpose to give a few details only of his life and work.

William Gilpin was born on the 4th of June, 1724, at Scaleby Castle, near Carlisle, where his family had lived for three generations. His father was Captain John Bernard Gilpin, a lineal