MAT. 211 



land they lose all that power to please, which they so emi- 

 nently possess on the barren hills of Agrigentum and Segesta, 

 or the naked plains of Palestine and Athens. 



Speaking of the different kinds of scenery, our author 

 does not think the word picturesque applicable to one kind 

 any more than to another, regarding any scene 'picturesque 

 which is adapted to the painter's art. He remarks, that ruined 

 buildings, with fragments of sculptured walls and broken col- 

 umns, the mouldering remnants of obsolete taste and fallen 

 magnificence, afford pleasure to every learned beholder, 

 wholly independent of their real beauty, or the pleasing im- 

 pressions which they make on the organs of sight ; more es- 

 pecially when discovered in countries of ancient celebrity, 

 renowned in history for learning, arts or empire. The mind 

 is led by the view of them into the most pleasing trains of 

 ideas ; and the whole scenery around receives an accessory 

 character, which is commonly called classical ; as the ideas 

 which it excites are associated with the incidents of classical 

 history. 



There is another species of scenery, in which every object 

 is wild, abrupt and fantastic ; in which endless intricacies 

 discover, at every turn, something new and unexpected. This 

 sort of scenery we call romantic, not only because it is similar 

 to that described in romances, but because it affords the same 

 kind of pleasure as we feel from the relation of romantic 

 incidents. 



In other scenes, we are delighted with neat and comfortable 

 cottages, inhabited by a plain and simple, but not rude or 

 vulgar people ; placed amid cultivated but not ornamented 

 or dressed grounds. Such scenery, consisting of meads and 

 pastures, abounding in flocks and herds, we call pastoral. 

 The pleasure derived from it is greatly enhanced, to a mind 

 conversant with pastoral poetry, by the association of the ideas 

 excited with those previously formed. In all these cases the 

 pleasure excited is dependent on association. Show either 

 picturesque, classical, romantic or pastoral scenery to a person 

 whose mind, however well organized, is wholly unprovided 

 with correspondent ideas, and it will no otherwise affect him 



