49 



around is smooth and level ? Is he lo 

 plant bushes, or suffer them to grow, when 

 the whole lawn is open and cleared ? These 

 are questions which Mr. Brown's admirers 

 might ask with triumph ; and here, they 

 might add, the superiority of our school of 

 improvement, and the genius of its founder 

 appear in the clearest light: that great self- 

 taught master,*by reducing thebanks every 

 where to the same height, by sloping them 

 regularly, and keeping them clear from all 

 rubbish, has preserved, as far as it is possi- 

 ble, that great beauty — continuity of sur- 

 face; for in his artificial rivers, if we except 

 the space which the water itself occupies, 

 every blade of grass is seen as it was before 

 the water was made. It must be owned 

 that if the pleasure of viewing a piece of 

 scenery consisted in being able to follow a 



* Very few great self-taught masters have ever existed ; 

 none, perhaps, strictly speaking. Mr. Brown certainly is 

 in no sense of that number; and to hear the same title 

 given to him as to Shakespear, or Salvator Rosa, would 

 raise our indignation, if the extreme ridicule did not give 

 another turn to our feelings. 



VOL. II. 



