Drumlanrig. 3 



sloping lawn, which at the bottom is received by a river ; and 

 beyond that rises in lofty woody banks. All these objects are in 

 the grandest style, except the river ; which, though not large, 

 is by no means inconsiderable. It is amazing what con- 

 trivance has been used to deform all this beauty. The descent 

 from the house has a substratum of solid rock, which has been 

 cut into three or four terraces, at an immense expense. The 

 art of blasting rocks by gunpowder was not in use when this 

 great work was undertaken. It was all performed by manual 

 labour; and men now alive remember hearing their fathers 

 say, that a workman, after employing a whole summer day 

 with his pickaxe, would carry off in his apron all the stone 

 he had chipped from the rock. How much less expensive is 

 it, in general, to improve the face of nature, than to deform 

 it ! In improving, we gently follow ; in deforming, we violently 

 oppose. The Duke of Queensberry of that day, who carried 

 on these works, seems himself to have been aware of his folly. 

 He bundled up all the accounts together ; and inscribed them, 

 as I have been informed, widi a grievous curse on any of his 

 posterity who should ever look into them." (p. 84-.) The other 

 observations made by Gilpin on this place are excellent, as, 

 indeed, is all that he has written on picturesque beauty ; 

 always, however, making allowance for his almost exclusive 

 admiration of that kind of beauty. 



Of all the alterations which we should wish to make on the 

 grounds at Drmnlanriff? there is none that strikes us as of 

 half the importance as that of formmg new approaches. 

 There is one now going on ; but a more preposterous under- 

 taking of the kind we have seldom or never witnessed in any 

 country. An attempt is made, or was making in August, 

 1831, to ascend a steep acclivity directly in front of the 

 house; a still more hopeless task than that of cutting the rock 

 into terraces, above related by Gilpin, by the old Duke of 

 Queensberry. The duke did succeed, and the terraces were 

 formed, and now exist; but this approach never can form an 

 easy ascent ; and we maintain that, even if it did, it would be 

 in the very worst taste imaginable in the given situation ; for 

 this specific reason, that it would show all the striking beauties 

 of the spot before entering the house. Now, we hold it to be 

 a fundamental principle, in laying out grounds, that the grand 

 beauties of every situation should be first shown to the 

 stranger from the drawing-room windows. If this be not a 

 fundamental principle, we should be glad to know on what 

 . reasons either the situation for a house is fixed on, or the 

 direction of a road to it is laid out. There are many points 

 in which a stranger taking a cursory glance at a place may be 



B 2 



