Turn the lawn into a piece of broken ground, plant rugged 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 brushwood; in a word, instead of ma- king the whole smooth, make it rough, and you make it also picturesque. All the other ingredients of beau- ty it already possesses." On the whole, picturesque composition consists in uniting 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, moun- tains, and distances. These objects in themselves pro- duce infinite variety; no two rocks or trees are exact- ly the same; they are varied a second time by combi- nation; and almost 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 often 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 composition of the objects of landscape which the pic- turesque eye examines, it connects them with the at- mosphere, and seeks for all those various effects which are produced from that vast and wonderful storehouse of nature. Nor is there in travelling a greater pleasure than when a scene of grandeur bursts unexpectedly up- on the eye, accompanied with some accidental circum- stance 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 insuspicious 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 greenward make an agreeable variety. Often too on these vast tracts of intersecting grounds we see beautiful lights, soften- ing 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 cattle 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 ac- companiment. In many other situations also we find them wonderfully pleasing, and capable of making pic- tures 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 hil- locks and crumbling earth, give many an excellent lesson for a foreground. When we have no opportu- nity of examining the grand energy of nature, we have everywhere at least the means of observing with what a multiplicity of parts, and yet with what gen- eral simplicity, the cover 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 therefore finish our article with a short quotation from the beginning 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 also of the beauty of virtue; and that every 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 amuse- ments to a higher purpose; if its great scenes can in- spire him with religious awe, or its tranquil scenes with that complacency of mind which is so nearly al- lied 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."