SECLUSION AND FREEDOM. 303 



ingSj nor intensify them; it cherishes a train of poetic 

 thoughts, and gives a softer character to our sorrows. I 

 believe we never visit unadorned Nature without gaining 

 some impressions from her scenery that serve to magnify 

 our happiness. In the secluded scenes of the outer world 

 it is not solitude we seek, but a sequestration from all 

 that is wearisome and offensive ; and while surrounded 

 by them, our sensation of freedom exalts, as much as that 

 of solitude composes, the mind. 



It is the sentiment of freedom that causes the pleasure 

 with which we look upon fields unenclosed and roads not 

 bounded by a fence, but admitting free access to woods 

 and grounds on ' either side, that seem to invite us to en- 

 ter. We dislike any manifest signs of the appropriation 

 of earth's green surface. Landscape-gardeners dwell with 

 singular complacency upon the idea of " appropriation," 

 on account of the lordly sense of personal grandeur with 

 which its evidences inspire the owner. They afford, a 

 rich man a proud consciousness of his own dignity, by 

 showing him the greatness of his possessions. This is 

 one of the principles of landscape-gardening which is 

 based, not on a sentiment of nature, but of pride, selfish- 

 ness, and exclusiveness. The expression wrought into 

 landscape by such artifice indicates the stolid feeling of 

 an aristocrat, not the sensibility of a painter or a poet. 

 The effects of working on this principle when improving 

 landscape are offensive to those who would see this earth 

 open to the enjoyment of all rational beings. 



We know that all the lands, and the trees and shrub- 

 bery that grow upon them, are the property of some legal 

 owner ; but we dislike to see the evidence of this paraded 

 before our sight by certain artifices designed for this very 

 purpose. If a number of rustic yeomen and laborers are 

 the owners, who are content to leave them without any 

 ostentatious marks of their ownership, we feel, when ram- 



