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It is very unfortunate that this great 

 legislator of our national taste, whose laws 

 still remain in force, should not have re- 

 ceived from nature, or have acquired by 

 education, more enlarged ideas. Claude 

 Lorraine was bred a pastry-cook, but in 

 every thing that regards his art as a painter, 

 he had an elevated and comprehensive 

 mind ; nor in anjr part of his works can we 

 trace the meanness of his original occupa- 

 tion. Mr. Brown was bred a gardener, and 

 having nothing of the mind, or the eye of a 

 painter, he formed his style (or rather his 

 plan) upon the model of a parterre; and 

 transferred its minute beauties, its little 

 clumps, knots, and patches of flowers, the 

 oval belt that surrounds it, and all its 

 twists and crineum crancums, to the great 

 scale of nature*. 



* This ingenious device of magnifying a parterre, calls 

 to my mind a story I heard many years ago. A country 

 parson, in the county where I live, speaking of a gentle- 

 sn;m of low stature, but of extremely pompous mauners, 

 who had just left the company, exclaimed, in the simplicity 

 and admiration of his heart, " quite grandeur in miniature, 

 I protest !" This compliment reversed, would perfectly 



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