150 



is indispensable ; and the skill that is shewn 

 in conducting them, though not to be rated 

 too high, is by no means without its merit. 

 That was I\Ir. Brown's fort, and there he 

 was a real improver; for before him, the 

 horror of strait lines made the first im- 

 provers on the new system, conceive that 

 they could hardly make too many turns.* 

 His misfortune, (and still more that of his 

 employers,) was, that, knowing his fort, he 

 resorted to it upon all occasions, and car- 

 ried the gravel walk, its sweeps, and its 

 lines, to rivers, to plantations, and univer- 

 sally to all improvements ; not contented 

 with making gardens, many parts of which 

 he well understood, he chose to make land- 

 scapes, of which he was worse than igno- 

 rant ; for of them he had the falsest concep- 

 tions. Against his landscapes, not against 

 his gardens, has almost the whole of n\y 

 attack being pointed ; in the one, everything 



* I am told, that he began the reformatiou of those zig- 

 zag, cork-screw walks; and thut he used to say of them, 

 with ver> just ridicule, that you might put one foot upon 

 gig, and the other upon zag. 



