440 



PICTURESQUE IMPROVEMENT. 



BOOK I. 



« But should the tasteful power 



Pragmatic, which presides with pencilling hand, 

 And striding compasses, o'er all this change, 

 Get in his thrall some hapless stream that lurks 

 Wimpling through hazelly shaw and broomy glen, 

 Instant the axe resounds through all the dale, 

 And many a pair unhoused hovering lament 

 The barbarous devastation ; all is smoothed, 

 Save here and there a tree; the hawthorn, briar, 

 The hazel bush, the bramble, and the broom, 

 The sloethorn, scotias, myrtle, all are gone ; 

 And on the well-sloped bank arise trim clumps, 

 Some round and some oblong, of shrubs-exotic, 

 A wilderness of poisons, precious deemed 

 In due proportion to their ugliness." 



The kind of scenery destroyed, to give way to this mode of 

 improvement, may be conceived from the following passage : 



" What though fair Scotland's vallies rarely vaunt 

 The oak majestical, whose aged boughs 

 Darken a road breadth ! yet no where is seen 

 More beauteously profuse wild underwood ; 

 No where ; 'tis seen more beauteously profuse, 

 Than on thy tangling banks, well wooded Esk, 

 And Borthwick thine, above that fairy nook 

 Formed by your blending streams. The hawthorn there 

 With moss and lichen grey, dies of old age, 

 No steel profane permitted to intrude : 

 Up to the topmost branches climbs the rose, 

 And mingles with the fading blooms of May ; 

 While round the briar the honeysuckle wreathes 

 Entwine, and with their sweet perfume embalm 

 The dying rose : a never-failing blow, 

 From spring to fall expands ; the sloethorn white 

 As if a flakey shower the leafless sprays ✓ 

 Had hung : the hawthorn, May's fair diadem ; 

 • The whin's rich die ; the bonny broom ; the rasp 

 Erect ; the rose, red, white, and faintest pink ; 

 And long extending brambles flowery shoots. 



Graham's Birds of Scotland, page 24, 



