Nor will the influence of climate afford a more satisfactory explanation of the difference. The sun shines with not less brilliancy on the proud dome of St. Peter's, than it did on the stately columns of the temple of Jove; the waves of the lake of Como reflect a sky of as deep an indigo as ever tinged the waters of the Larian. Yet the conquerors of the world have yielded to the dominion of priests; the haughtiest of men have given place to the most abject of slaves. Superstition reigns where the love of glory warmed every breast.

The olive tree still flourishes on the calcareous hills of Attica; the territory of Athens is yet barren of corn. The productions of Greece have suffered no alteration: her harvests are not less abundant or less regular in their periods. The climate is still the same; the soil has undergone no variation. Man alone is changed. The cradle of philosophy now only nurses the grossest ignorance. Little foreign blood has been mixed with the descendants of the ancient Greeks; yet the walks, that were once trod by Pericles and Plato, now groan under the weight of thieves and marauders. The most ingenious of men have given birth to a race who look with stupid indifference on the sublimest efforts of human genius. It is only by their love of theft the Mainotes can prove their Spartan origin.

The arts and sciences have been continually shifting their abode with the changeable relations of society. The sun of science has ceased to glitter in the waters of Helicon; but its influence, which is no longer felt on the forked top of Parnassus, has pierced the deepest recesses of the Druidical forests, and chasing away the religious gloom of the hyperborean regions, has shone with meridian splendour in the sacred isles. And who shall set bounds to its revolutions? Perhaps a few

years may see it traverse the wide ocean; and, following the course of empire, light up the vast wilderness of America. Already the descendants of Aristotle fill the schools of the barbarous Noricum; and yet a little while, and perhaps the countrymen of Bacon may be content to seek instruction on the banks of the Susquehanna. The new world may repay its debt of gratitude to the old, and the learning of Europe may again be tutored by the wisdom of the Atlantides.

But enticing as is the subject, I dare not pursue it: it would lead me too far. A theme which might fill volumes cannot be discussed in a few pages. Leaving the nobler and more. extensive inquiry to those happier spirits, whose eagle-eye can, at a single glance, penetrate the whole system of the universe, and lay bare the most hidden mysteries of nature, I mean to dedicate the short space which is allotted me to a consideration of the causes which have of late years generated among my countrymen the love of the picturesque.

I speak of it as a new taste; for it appears to have been wholly unknown to our ancestors. They who were constantly surrounded with woods and rivers and fields, whose whole lives wore away amongst the beauties of nature, seem to have contemplated them with little enthusiasm. The wilder charms of mountain-scenery excited in their minds few pleasing emotions. Though they could not entirely help seeing them, their preference was always given to the milder and more artificial graces of cultivated nature. The stately and majestic flow of the Thames, the vagrant meanderings of the lazy Trent, have been more frequently sung by our earlier poets, than the lawless and impetuous course of the Tees or the Wharfe, with all their romantic accompaniments of precipices and waterfalls, of moss-grown rocks and over

hanging trees. The loaded bark gently gliding along the smooth surface of the waters, was to them a more grateful sight than the tumbling and foaming of the cataract, bearing in its bosom huge masses of rock. Like the Frenchman, who travelled unmoved through all the beauties of Derbyshire, who scarcely heeded the picturesque scenery of Matlock, and reserved all his admiration for the fat meadows of Cheshire-their idea of beauty was a good deal regulated by their idea of usefulness. Their houses were placed at the end of towns; long rows of trees divided the flatness of their parks into regular parallelograms; and the lofty wall, which kept in the deer, shut out all view of the country. Their artificial beauties were fashioned on the same principle; their extensive grass-plots fed their cattle; the ponds supplied the larder with carp and tench. The garden for fruit and vegetables, which modern decorum conceals among embowering trees, was spread out at the foot of the terrace, to keep them constantly in mind how much of its plenty their table owed to its produce.

The writings of Lord Bacon display at every page a deep and intense feeling for the works of nature. He loved to woo her in her most secret bower. His mind waited on her biddings. He was always watchful to surprise her secrets; yet his plan of a garden was formal and artificial. He had no other idea of beauty than straight walks and square plantations: his scheme was wholly architectural.

Honest Isaac Walton shows by his descriptions, that whilst hanging over the mountain-stream, intent to surprise the caution of the wily trout, he was not so exclusively occupied by his pursuit as to be wholly lost to the charm of the scenery around him. Yet his impressions were rather those of an Italian than of a modern Englishman.

He would rather have applied the Horrido of the Italians than our romantic, to describe the dark and gloomy scenery of Skiddaw, or the cloud-capt head of the sublime and dreary Benlomond. Their Selvaggio would better than our picturesque have conveyed the idea excited in his mind by the wild scenery of the Combs of Devonshire, their shelving banks, their noisy rills almost lost to sight among the thick foliage of the mountain oak.

It is a fact of no little curiosity, that most of our poets have owed their birth to cities. Early associations, the habitual contemplation of the beauties of nature have contributed little to their inspiration. Their poetry has been rather the effect of reflection than the impulse of sensibility. They have oftener wooed the muse amidst the smoke and dirt and noise of London, than in sylvan glades, or amongst rustic scenes. They have been more familiar with the crafty cunning of the town, than with the innocent simplicity of the village. Chaucer was not only a native of London, but his time was shared between poetry and business. It was as a relaxation from the dullness of Custom-house computations that he was induced to follow his pilgrims to the shrine of the martyred saint. Milton was born in Bread-street; the greater part of his life was passed in London; his most intimate communings with the divine Spirit which breathes in all his poetry, were in a garden-house in Holborn. Spenser, Pope, and Gray, lisped their first numbers to the chimes of Bow-bells. The years which Pope afterwards passed amidst the graceful scenery of Windsor Forest gave him, it seems, the inclination but not the talent for pastoral. Green-Arbour-Court might, from its name, lead us to believe that there was something rural in the residence of Goldsmith. A visit to

this scene of wretchedness, between Fleet-market and the Old Bailey, would at once dissipate the illusion. Shakspeare was indeed born in the country, and passed his youth among its sports; but he is not the poet of inanimate nature; he is only great when he struggles with the workings of mind.

The period of formal gardening, of clipt hedges and straight walks, is synchronical with the reign of descriptive poetry. Our poets were only happy in their pictures, when none could judge of the likeness. Pope first introduced a better taste in the laying out of grounds; he first taught his countrymen to admire the picturesque; and the next generation saw Shenstone hopping along his own gravel walks, and chirping the last of English pastorals. The modern race of country-born poets have given themselves, almost exclusively, to narrative, or to the description of manners, which exist but in tradition, of which our knowledge is wholly derived from books; they seldom think of delineating the landscape, with which long acquaintance has rendered them familiar. If they describe, it is India, it is Persia, it is Greece; lands to which they and their readers are equally strangers. The country has, indeed, only become rich in poetical genius, since it has lost its rusticity, since the influence of the Metropolis has pervaded and fashioned the ideas of the remotest villages.

These facts are surely enough of themselves to make us pause before we, in any way, connect the love of the picturesque with that deep and ardent feeling of the beauties of nature, that veneration for her works, which seems to be almost inseparable from true genius, which gives it its noblest character. We may, perhaps, with more truth, ascribe it to the mawkish sentiment of a love of contrast; to the restless feeling which makes us find