NOVEMBER. 497 



are now obliterated by the plough ; yet still so many elegint 

 ruins of this kind are left, that they may be called not only 

 one of the peculiar features of English landscape, but may 

 be ranked also among its most picturesque beauties. 



With regard to architectural styles and ornaments, Mr. 

 Gilpin thinks we may be too much bigoted to Greek and 

 Roman architecture. A slavish imitation of many of its or- 

 naments may be carried into absurdity. We are fettered 

 also too much by orders and proportions. The ancients them- 

 selves paid no such close attention to them. Our modern 

 code was collected by average calculations from their works. 

 But if the modern legislators of the art had been obliged to 

 produce precedents, they could not have found any two 

 buildings, among the remains of ancient Rome, which were 

 exactly of the same proportions. Though it may be difficult 

 to please in any other form of architecture than what we see 

 in daily use, yet in an art which has not nature for its model 

 the mind recoils with disdain at the idea of an exclusive sys- 

 tem. The Greeks did not imagine that when they had 

 invented a good thing, the faculty was exhausted and inca- 

 pable of producing another. Where should we have admired, 

 at this day, the beauty of the Ionic order, if, after the Doric 

 had been invented, it had been considered the ne plus ultra 

 of art, and every deviation from its proportions reprobated as 

 barbarous innovations ? These remarks of the author seem 

 to me to be just, for the reasons were never yet rendered 

 intelligible to my mind, why there should be only five orders 

 of architecture, or why we might not with just as much 

 propriety reduce the classification of trees to five genera. 



No man has given the public a more interesting picturesque 

 treatise on Forest Trees than the Rev. Wm. Gilpin ; but it 

 would be idle to attempt to convey to the reader any idea of 

 it by a few extracts. The foregoing remarks are abridged 

 chiefly from his works on English Landscape. The work 

 known as Gilpin's Laiidscape Garderiing, was written by 

 W. S. Gilpin, a nephew of our author. 



VOL. XXII. NO. XI. 63 



