PICTURESQUE BEAUTY

PICTURESQUE BEAUTY, says a late writer on that subject, refers to "such beautiful objects as are suited to the pencil." This epithet is chiefly applied to the works of nature, though it will often apply to works of art also. Those objects are most properly denominated picturesque, which are disposed by the hand of nature with a mixture of varied rudeness, simplicity, and grandeur. A plain neat garden, with little variation in its plan, and no striking grandeur in its position, displays too much of art, design, and uniformity, to be called picturesque. "The ideas of neat and smooth (says Mr Gilpin), instead of being picturesque, in fact disqualify the object in which they reside from any pretensions to picturesque beauty. Nay, farther, we do not scruple to assert, that roughness forms the most essential point of difference between the beautiful and the picturesque; as it seems to be that particular quality which makes

Picture-que makes objects chiefly pleasing in painting. I use the ge-
neral term roughness; but properly speaking roughness re-
lates only to the surfaces of bodies: when we speak of
their delineation, we use the word ruggedness. Both
ideas, however, equally enter into the picturesque, and
both are observable in the smaller as well as in the
larger parts of nature; in the outline and bark of a
tree, as in the rude summit and craggy sides of a mount-
ain.

Let us then examine our theory by an appeal to
experience, and try how far these qualities enter into
the idea of picturesque beauty, and how far they mark
that difference among objects which is the ground of
our inquiry.

"A piece of Palladian architecture may be elegant
in the last degree; the proportion of its parts, the prop-
riety of its ornaments, and the symmetry of the whole,
may be highly pleasing; but if we introduce it in a pic-
ture, it immediately becomes a formal object, and ceases
to please. Should we wish to give it picturesque beau-
ty, we must use the mallet instead of the chisel; we must
beat down one half of it, deface the other, and throw
the mutilated members around in heaps; in short, from
a smooth building we must turn it into a rough ruin.
No painter who had the choice of the two objects
would hesitate a moment.

"Again, why does an elegant piece of garden-
ground make no figure on canvas? the shape is plea-
sing, the combination of the objects harmonious, and
the winding of the walk in the very line of beauty. All
this is true; but the smoothness of the whole, though
right and as it should be in nature, offends in picture.
Turn the lawn into a piece of broken ground, plant rug-
ged oaks instead of flowering shrubs, break the edges of
the walk, give it the rudeness of a road, mark it with
wheel tracks, and scatter around a few stones and brush-
wood; in a word, instead of making the whole smooth,
make it rough, and you make it also picturesque. All
the other ingredients of beauty it already possessed."
On the whole, picturesque composition consists in uni-
ting in one whole, a variety of parts, and these parts
can only be obtained from rough objects.

It is possible, therefore, to find picturesque objects
among works of art, and it is possible to make objects
so; but the grand scene of picturesque beauty is na-
ture in all its original variety, and in all its irregular
grandeur. "We seek it (says our author) among all the
ingredients of landscape, trees, rocks, broken grounds,
woods, rivers, lakes, plains, valleys, mountains, and dis-
tances. These objects in themselves produce infinite
variety; no two rocks or trees are exactly the same;
they are varied a second time by combination; and al-
most as much a third time by different lights and shades
and other aerial effects. Sometimes we find among
them the exhibition of a whole, but oftener we find only
beautiful parts."

Sublimity or grandeur alone cannot make an object
picturesque: for, as our author remarks, "however
grand the mountain or the rock may be, it has no
claim to this epithet, unless its form, its colour, or its
accompaniments, have some degree of beauty. No-
thing can be more sublime than the ocean; but wholly
unaccompanied, it has little of the picturesque. When
we talk therefore of a sublime object, we always under-
stand that it is also beautiful; and we call it sublime or

beautiful only as the ideas of sublimity or simple beauty prevail. But it is not only the form and the compo-
sition of the objects of landscape which the picturesque
eye examines; it connects them with the atmosphere,
and seeks for all those various effects which are produ-
ced from that vast and wonderful storehouse of nature.
Nor is there in travelling a greater pleasure than when
a scene of grandeur bursts unexpectedly upon the eye,
accompanied with some accidental circumstance of the
atmosphere which harmonizes with it, and gives it
double value."

There are few places so barren as to afford no pic-
turesque scene.

Believe the muse,
She does not know that inauspicious spot
Where beauty is thus niggard of her store.
Believe the muse, through this terrestrial waste
The seeds of grace are sown, profusely sown,
Even where we least may hope.

Mr Gilpin mentions the great military road between
Newcastle and Carlisle as the most barren tract of
country in England; and yet there, he says, there is
"always something to amuse the eye. The inter-
changeable patches of heath and green-ward make an
agreeable variety. Often too on these vast tracts of
intersecting grounds we see beautiful lights, softening
off along the sides of hills; and often we see them
adorned with cattle, flocks of sheep, heath-cocks, grouse,
plover, and flights of other wild fowl. A group of cat-
tle standing in the shade on the edge of a dark hill, and
relieved by a lighter distance beyond them, will often
make a complete picture without any other accompani-
ment. In many other situations also we find them won-
derfully pleasing, and capable of making pictures amidst
all the deficiencies of landscape. Even a winding road
itself is an object of beauty; while the richness of the
heath on each side, with the little hillocks and crum-
bling earth, give many an excellent lesson for a fore-
ground. When we have no opportunity of examining
the grand scenery of nature, we have everywhere at least
the means of observing with what a multiplicity of parts,
and yet with what general simplicity, she covers every
surface.

"But if we let the imagination loose, even scenes
like these administer great amusement. The imagi-
nation can plant hills; can form rivers and lakes in
valleys; can build castles and abbeys; and, if it find
no other amusement, can dilate itself in vast ideas of
space."

Mr Gilpin, after describing such objects as may be
called picturesque, proceeds to consider their sources of
amusement. We cannot follow our ingenious author
through the whole of this consideration, and shall there-
fore finish our article with a short quotation from the be-
ginning of it. "We might begin (says he) in moral
style, and consider the objects of nature in a higher light
than merely as amusement. We might observe, that a
search after beauty should naturally lead the mind to
the great origin of all beauty; to the

first good, first perfect, and first fair.

But though in theory this seems a natural climax, we
insist the less upon it, as in fact we have scarce ground
to hope that every admirer of picturesque beauty is an
admirer

Picturesque admirer also of the beauty of virtue; and that every Beauty lover of nature reflects, that

Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God.

If, however, the admirer of nature can turn his amusements to a higher purpose; if its great scenes can inspire him with religious awe, or its tranquil scenes with that complacency of mind which is so nearly allied to benevolence, it is certainly the better. Apponat luero. It is so much into the bargain; for we dare not promise him more from picturesque travel than a rational and agreeable amusement. Yet even this may be of some use in an age teeming with licentious pleasure; and may in this light at least be considered as having a moral tendency.