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

(b) According to Camden, this conversion happened about the year 630, in the southern Pictish provinces; while the northern, which were separated by fruitful mountains, were converted by Columba.

(c) We are told by some authors that Columba taught the Piets to celebrate Easter always on a Sunday between the 14th and 20th of March, and to observe a different method of tonsure from the Romans, leaving an imperfect appearance of a crown. This occasioned much dispute till Naitan brought his subjects at length to the Roman rule. In that age many of the Piets went on a pilgrimage to Rome, according to the custom of the times; and amongst the rest we find two persons mentioned in the antiquities of St Peter's church. Asterius count of the Piets, and Syra with his countrymen, performed their vow. makes objects chiefly pleasing in painting. I use the general term roughness; but properly speaking roughness relates 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 mountain.

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 propriety of its ornaments, and the symmetry of the whole, may be highly pleasing; but if we introduce it in a picture, it immediately becomes a formal object, and ceases to please. Should we wish to give it picturesque beauty, 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 pleasing, 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 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 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 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 nature 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 distances. 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 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 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. Nothing 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 understand that it is also beautiful; and we call it sublime or

beautiful only as the ideas of sublimity or simple beauty Picturesque prevail. But it is not only the form and the composition 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 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 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 picturesque 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 interchangeable patches of heath and green-sward 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 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 accompaniment. In many other situations also we find them wonderfully 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 beach on each side, with the little hillocks and crumbling earth, give many an excellent lesson for a foreground. 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 imagination 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 admira admire 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 amusements to a higher purpose; if its great scenes can inspire him with a religious awe, or its tranquil scenes with that complacency of mind which is so nearly allied to benevolence, it is certainly the better. Apponat lucro. 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.