JULY. 303 



" Let dull mechanics in the cloistered schools 

 Cramp nature's freedom with their compassed rules ; 

 Their grounds with frigid symmetry confine, 

 And on dull paper trace the measured line. 

 You on the very borders take your stand, 

 The ready pencil trembling in your hand. 

 The landscapes and the hills around display, 

 Mark how each distant object fades away. 

 Learn each resource, each obstacle devise. 

 Wonders from difficulties always rise." 



Next follow some excellent remarks on the advantages to 

 health and to prospect derived from the draining of morasses. 

 Wherever a stagnant fen sleeps in unwholesome torpor, there 

 spread out a lake, or lead along a river that shall drain off the 

 stagnant waters, and render a scene that was unsightly and 

 unhealthy, beautiful to the sight, salubrious, and fit for the 

 dwellings of men. Such a method of making artificial water, 

 we would add to the author's remarks, must be followed with 

 highly beneficial effects, and the evident utility of such an 

 operation would atone for any formal lines in the courses of 

 the canals, or in the boundaries of the ponds thus created. 



The author dwells on the importance of life and motion to 

 the charm of landscape scenery. Trees bending to the breeze 

 on the green, open plain ; smoke ascending from cottage 

 chimneys ; herds running upon the hills, and shepherds or 

 peasants engaged in their labors, — all these objects add inter- 

 est and positive beauty to a landscape, as they do to a picture. 

 The appearance of liberty is no less pleasing than that of life 

 and motion. Hence the limits of the grounds should not be 

 apparent : they should be hidden, if not removed. All charms 

 vanish when expectation ceases : some things not yet seen 

 must be imagined to await us in the distance, and we must 

 apparently enjoy a free access to these unexplored parts of 

 the landscape. Our Gothic sires, for security from their foes, 

 transformed their rural mansions into camps. But in these 

 days there is no occasion for preserving their high walls and 

 their entrenchments. 



•' To walls that frown, o'erhung with dismal gloom, 

 True taste prefers those mounds of various bloom, 

 Where the fringed thorn its purple fruit bestows, 

 And the hand trembles as it plucks the rose." 



