Notes 231 



composing altogether a line literally serpentine, is, if possible, 

 worse: it is but a number of regularities put together in a dis- 

 orderly manner, and equally distant from the beautiful, both 

 of art and of nature. The true beauty of an outline consists 

 more in breaks than in sweeps ; rather in angles than in 

 rounds ; in variety, not in succession. 



" The outline of a wood is a continued line, and small vari- 

 ations do not save it from the insipidity of sameness; one deep 

 recess, one bold prominence, has more effect than twenty 

 little irregularities: that one divides the line into parts, but no 

 breach is thereby made in its unity ; a continuation of wood 

 always remains, the form of it only is altered, and the extent 

 is increased : the eye, which hurries to the extremity of what- 

 ever is uniform, delights to trace a varied line through all its 

 intricacies, to pause from stage to stage, and to lengthen the 

 progress. 



" The parts must not, however, on that account be multi- 

 plied till they are too minute to be interesting and so numer- 

 ous as to create confusion A few large parts should be 

 strongly distinguished in their forms, their directions, and their 

 situations ; each of these may afterwards be decorated with 

 subordinate varieties, and the mere growth of the plants will 

 occasion some irregularity ; on many occasions more will not 

 be required. 



" Every variety in the outline of a wood must be a promin- 

 ence or a recess ; breadth in either is not so important as length 

 to the one and depth to the other; if the former ends in an 

 angle or the latter diminishes to a point, they have more force 

 than a shallow dent or a dwarf excrescence, how wide soever: 

 they are greater deviations from the continued line which they 

 are intended to break and their effect is to enlarge the wood 

 itself. 



"An inlet into a wood seems to have been cut if the oppo- 

 site points of the entrance tally, and that shew of art depre- 

 ciates its merit : but a difference only in the situation of those 

 points, by bringing one more forward than the other, prevents 

 the appearance, though their forms be similar. 



