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creation opening before their eyes." And again he calls him 

 " the inventor of an art that realizes painting, and improves 

 nature : Mahomet imagined an elysium, but Kent created 

 many." The greatest of all authorities tells us, that in 

 Esher's peaceful grove, both 



Kent and Nature vied for Pelham's love. 



Mr. Mason, in his English Garden, thus panegyrises his 

 elysian scenes: 



Kent, who felt 



The pencil's power; but fix'd by higher hopes 

 Of beauty than that pencil knew to paint, 

 Work'd with the living lives that nature lent, 

 And realized his landscapes. 



Mr. Pope, as well as Kent, would, and Mr. Walpole, and 

 Mr. Mason, must each of them have read with high appro- 

 bation the following remark of the late Sir Uvedale Price: 

 " the noble and varied works of the eminent painters of every 

 age and every country, and those of their supreme mistress, 

 Nature, should be the great models of imitation.*' 



Mr. Whateley paints in glowing language, the genius of 

 Kent, both at Stowe, and at Claremont. Mr. George Mason 

 thus honestly and finely pleads for him: "According to my 

 own ideas, all that has since been done by the most de- 

 servedly admired designers, as Southcote, Hamilton, Lyttle- 

 ton, Pitt, Shenstone, Morris, for themselves, and by Wright 

 for others, all that has been written on the subject, even the 

 gardening didactic poem, and the didactic essay on the pic- 

 turesque, have proceeded from Kent. Had Kent never ex- 

 terminated the bounds of regularity, never actually traversed 

 the way to freedom of manner, would any of these celebrated 

 artists have found it of themselves? Theoretic hints from 

 the highest authorities, had evidently long existed without 



