gular curves*, slopes, and levelled banks, 

 but with those characteristic beauties and 

 negligencies, which so plainly distinguish 

 natural rivers from all that has hitherto 

 been done in the pretended imitations 

 of them by art, they would, in Briggs's 

 language, *« stare like stuck pigs — do no 

 such thing," Their talent lies another 

 way; and if you have a real river, and 

 will let them improve it, you will be sur- 

 prised to find how soon they will make 

 it like an artificial one ; so much so, that 

 the most critical eye could scarcely discover 

 that its banks had not been planned by Mr. 

 Brown, and formed by the spade and the 

 wheel-barrow. 



* The lines in natural rivers, in bye roads, in the skirt- 

 ings of glades of forests, have sometimes the appearance 

 of regular curves, and seem to justify the use of them in 

 artificial scenery ; but something always saves them from 

 such a crude degree of it. If, on a subject so very uh- 

 rnathematical, I might venture to use auy allusion to that 

 science, or any term drawn from it, such lines might be 

 called picturesque asymptotes ; however they may approach 

 to regular curves, they never fall into them. 



