432 



NOTES AND ILLUSTEATIONS. 



number of the Quarterly Revieiv; and I must say that, as far as I am 

 a judge, it is, independently of its other merits, one of the most powerful, 

 judicious, and useful practical tracts existing in the language. Such is 

 the essay, and such the author whom, in his second pamphlet, Mr 

 Withers considers himself as quite able to put down ! From the sin- 

 gularly rapid way in which the great author is known to write, and 

 from the circumstance of his professing no accurate knowledge of phy- 

 tology, it cannot seem wonderful that some errors both in the theory 

 and the practice should have crept into the essay. But the celebrity 

 of the illustrious person in question, and the fact of his belonging to 

 this side of the Tweed, (which gave an additional colour to Mr Withers' 

 misrepresentation as to the Scotch method,) added to Sir Walter's 

 speaking rather slightingly of trenching, as a preparatory measure, 

 seem to have induced Mr Withers to adopt a personal mode of address. 

 The pamphlet, therefore, is thrown into the form of " A Letter to Sir 

 Walter Scott, Bart., exposing certain Fundamental Errors in his late 

 Essay on Planting Waste Lands, &c., the great loss and disappointment 

 generally attending the Scotch Style of Planting," — cum multis aliis. 

 Respecting the manner of this composition I shall say little, as 

 plain and unassuming" are epithets which cannot be applied to it; 

 and I shall say the less from being informed that the public in general, 

 and the author's friends in particular, loudly condemned the w^hole 

 style of address adopted ; and I entertain no doubt but that his own 

 good sense will ere long induce him to condemn it himself. Mr Withers 

 may rest assured, that neither the interests of learning, nor the advance- 

 ment of science, among a polished nation, ever yet were promoted by a 

 gratuitous departure from the rules of decorum and urbanity. But the 

 matter is an object of far greater magnitude than the manner ; and as 

 the former might, by possibility, have some weight with the Commis- 

 sioners of Woods and Forests, I feel called upon to obviate, in as far 

 as I can, the extensive injury which the principle contended for might 

 occasion to the " future navies" of the empire. 



The first thing, then, that Mr Withers does, is of course to fasten 

 with eagerness on some of those trivial errors which, as already said, 

 appear in Sir Walter's powerful specimen of didactic writing, and to 

 magnify them into defects of the most portentous species. This is just 

 the sort of tactic that might have been expected. The next thing is, 

 to fasten as eagerly on Mr William Billington — a good, plain, and 

 commonplace person, who was some years since surveyor- general, 

 under the authority of the Commissioners for planting the Forest of 

 Dean. This worthy person is then completely shown up. His igno- 

 rance, his arrogance, his weakness, his self-delusion, are all depicted in 



