LORD WOODHOUSELEE. 523 



the time, but tended to form his taste in future days ; and he 

 was among the first literary men of this country, who felt the 

 beauty of our language in its first stage of improvement, and 

 foresaw the advantages that the study of our earlier writers 

 would give to modern composition, by introducing greater 

 unity of character, a purer analogy of construction, and the 

 peculiar energy that arises from idiomatic expression. 



The same taste which guided the studies of Mr Tytler at 

 this period, directed also his amusements. The art of Draw- 

 ing, which he had at first begun to practise at Kensington, he 

 now resumed with ardor, amid the beautiful scenery he inha- 

 bited. The love of Music, which was hereditary in his family, 

 had been cultivated by the example, and under the instruc- 

 tions of his father, and he willingly became a performer, not 

 only to indulge his own taste, but that he might add his assist- 

 ance to the little family concerts with which that excellent 

 man loved always to close his active day. But the amusement 

 in which at this period Mr Tytler peculiarly delighted, was that 

 of making excursions to visit the remarkable scenery, either of 

 England, or of his own country. He had an early love of the 

 great and beautiful in Nature; and his sensibility in this respect 

 had been increased by his study of landscape painting. But his 

 taste was not of that servile kind, which looks only to the art 

 of imitation : and he felt that there were many other sources 

 of beauty in the scenery of Nature than the painter can em- 

 ploy. His mind was open, not only to all those moral expres- 

 sions which form what has been called the poetry of Nature^ 

 but to all those local and accidental expressions which it re- 

 ceives from the events of time ; and he loved to mingle in such 

 scenes, with the sensibilities of taste, the associations of poeti- 

 cal description, and the memory of historical events. In this 

 manner, Mr Tytler used always to pass some parts of the 



Vol. VIII. P. II. 3U summer 



