380 PICTURESQUE IMPROVEMENT. BOOK I. 



some by the efforts of art and genuine taste, at Foxley, Down- 

 ton, and Yoxal Lodge. These may give an idea of what is in- 

 tended by the use of wild plants and roughnesses; and the 

 charming forest of Needwood *, which, far superior to 



" the flowery walks of art, 



" Which lull but not transport the heart," 



exhibits an example both of wildness and utility, which it would 

 require all the hardened obstinacy or jaundiced taste of mo- 

 dern landscape gardeners to view without rapture ; and which 

 none, whose minds were capable of relishing any thing more 

 than the varied, the pretty, or the merely useful, or who were 

 not previously blinded by fashion, or shackled by ignorance, 

 could ever think of degrading by a comparison with modern 

 park scenery. 



Water is allowed by all to be one of the loveliest materials 

 of landscape. In regard to utility, its dispersion by means of 

 oceans, rivers, brooks, rills, springs, and vapour, is as neces- 

 sary to the existence of vegetable bodies, as the circulation of 

 the blood is essential to animal life ; and whether we look at the 

 blooming country girl, the tawny gipsey, or the delicate hue of 

 the amiable nymph of the drawing-room, still it is blood which 



* Celebrated in a beautiful poem, entitled, " Needwood Forest," by Mr. 

 Mundey ; and also by Mr. Gisborne, in his " Walks in a Forest." 



