tTbe Spectator 151 



their songs. By this means I have always the 

 music of the season in its perfection, and am 

 highly delighted to see the jay or the thrush 

 hopping about my walks and shooting before 

 my eye across the several little glades and alleys 

 that I pass through. I think there are as many 

 kinds of gardening as of poetry : your makers 

 of parterres and flower-gardens are epigramma- 

 tists and sonneteers in this art : contrivers of 

 bowers and grottos, treillages and cascades, are 

 romance writers. Wise and London are our 

 heroic poets ; and if, as a critic, I may single out 

 any passage of their works to commend, I shall 

 take notice of that part in the upper garden at 

 Kensington, which was at first nothing but a 

 gravel-pit. It must have been a fine genius for 

 gardening that could have thought of forming 

 such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an 

 area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon 

 and agreeable a scene as that which it is now 

 wrought into. To give this particular spot of 

 ground the greater effect, they have made a very 

 pleasing contrast ; for as on one side of the 

 walk you see this hollow basin, with its several 

 little plantations lying so conveniently under 

 the eye of the beholder ; on the other side of it 

 there appears a seeming mount, made up of trees 

 rising one higher than another in proportion as 

 they approach the centre. A spectator, who has 



