introduction 15 



charms of the villa to overpower those of the furze 

 and rock both in his grounds and in his poems, and re- 

 marks that one may smile at the following lines: 



"But oh! the transport most allied to song 

 In some fair villa's peacefiil bound 

 To catch soft hints from Nature's tongue 

 And bid Arcadia bloom around." 



Alexander Pope says: 



"Consult the Genius of the place in all." 



Delille writes: 



" Avant tout, connissez votre site et de lieu Adorez 

 le genie et consultez le Dieu." 



Joseph Addison in The Taller, No. 218, speaks thus: 



"Writers who have given us an account of China 

 tell us the inhabitants of that country laugh at the 

 plantations of our Europeans, which are laid out 

 by the rule and line; because they say any one may 

 place trees in equal rows and uniform figures. They 

 choose rather to show a genius in works of this nature, 

 and therefore always conceal the art by which they 

 direct themselves. They have a word, it seems, in 

 their language by which they express the particular 

 beauty of a plantation that thus strikes the imagin- 

 ation at first sight without discovering what it is 

 that has so agreeable an effect." 



Montesquieu in his Essay on Taste has this to say: 



"It is then the pleasure which an object gives 



