18 Gilpin's pouest scenery. 



times twenty-four, evil thriving, rotten, and dying 

 trees : what rottenness ! what hollowness ! what 

 dead arms ! withered tops ! curtailed trunks ! 

 what loads of mosses ! drooping boughs and dying 

 branches, shall you see everywhere.' * 



Now all these maladies, which our distressed 

 naturalist bemoans with so much feeling, are often 

 capital sources of picturesque beauty, both in the 

 wild scenes of Nature and in artificial landscape. 



What is. more beautiful, for instance, on a 

 rugged foreground, than an old tree with a liollow 

 trunk ? or with a dead arm, a drooping hough, or a 

 dying branch ? all which phrases I apprehend are 

 nearly synonymous. 



^ From the withered top, also, great use and beauty 

 may result in the composition of landscape, when 

 we wish to break the regularity of some continued 

 line which we would not entirely hide. 



By the curtailed trunk I suppose Mr. Lawson 

 means a tree whose principal stem has been 

 shattered by winds, or some other accident, while 

 the lower part of it is left in vigour. This is also 



* See Lawson's Orcliard. 



