satiety in whatever is familiar, and bids us hope for enjoyment from whatever is unknown. We shall be led to conclude that it takes its rise in the refinements of society: we shall trace its source not to nature but to art.

Of all the nations of Europe there is none whose state of society is so artificial as that of England; none whose habits of living depart so widely from the models of nature; none so strongly smitten with the love of the picturesque. But this direction of our taste, this alteration in our habits of thinking and acting is entirely of modern growth. It is with the increase of our wealth, and the spreading of our manufactures, that our taste has become more refined. The more closely we are hemmed in by trade, the more we seek to escape its influence. It is only since cotton-mills and iron-forges, erected in every dale, have defaced the natural beauties of the country, that we have become so jealous of what remains; that we have endeavoured to restore in our parks what commerce and enclosures have destroyed in the country; that we seek to mimic what we are no longer able to preserve. The inhabitants of England never thought of making pilgrimages to the wild glens of Scotland, till the spirit of improvement had laid waste all the native graces of their own soil; till the necessities of commerce had checked the wanton and vagrant course of its rivers, and damned them up into canals with their straight lines and sluggish waters. As picturesque scenery has become more rare, its value has become greater in our eyes. We prize it more as we know it less. Our wonder grows with our ignorance.

The most ardent admirers of wild scenery will be found amongst those who lead the most artificial lives;

the works of nature are dearest to those who are least familiar with them; who are chiefly conversant with works of art. The passion burns with the brightest flame in the bosom of the young ladies, who, submissive to fashion's rule, pass the best portion of their lives in the crowded assemblies and tasteless dissipation of London whose winter, longer than that of Lapland, does not less want the cheering presence of the sun. Each revolving year pours forth, from the murky streets of the metropolis, these fair votaries of nature, armed with sketch books and crayons, and anxious to teach the inhabitants of the country to admire the natural beauties which have surrounded them from their infancy, but which, from habit, have palled on their imagination, and seem to them too common to deserve their curiosity.

It is not difficult to explain why the feeling of those who live constantly in the country should be so different from that of its occasional visiters. Those who never quit the town but on parties of pleasure, who never see the country but in its most beautiful season, when it pours forth in profusion its fruits and its flowers, who relieve the tedium of an occasional wet day with pleasant society, and wear away time amidst the comforts and luxuries of a well-appointed house, never cast their eyes but on the bright side of the medal. The picture stands before them with all the advantages of light and shade. Their recollections of town contribute to embellish the country. The dusky and undistinguishable hue of a London sky serves as a foil to draw out and render more apparent the more vivid colouring of nature. Their own feelings help the delusion; the fresher breeze of the mountains raises their spirits and re-invigorates their jaded nerves. The sentiment of

their own happiness spreads its delightful hue over all the objects in the canvas. They are pleased because they are happy.

To the constant inhabitant of the country these sources of enjoyment are wanting. He has no recollections to enhance the beauty of the present scene. The visionary castles, the imaginary cathedrals, into which the schistus formation delights to fashion the tops and the salient angles of its mountains, are always associated in his mind with the deep and plashy clay at their bottom, through which he has toiled many a winter evening in all the wretchedness of darkness and of cold. The tree which so romantically overhangs the precipice, as if disdaining the support of earth, and ambitious to become an inhabitant of air, has too often, whilst bending and sighing under its growing influence, admonished him to prepare for the utmost fury of the storm. The living spring which gushes from the crevices of the limestone, and, bounding from rock to rock with all the playfulness of youthful vigour, dashes its sparkling waters into the stream below, presents itself to his imagination in the form of the winter torrent which has so often mocked his labours, and resumed the land which he thought he had won from the bed of the river. The dark and cumbrous masses of granite which encircle the coast of Cornwall, are always connected in the minds of its inhabitants, with the horrors of shipwreck. The western breeze never whispers through the deep chasms of the rock without seeming to waft to their ears the agonizing shrieks of the drowning seamen. These scenes, so delightful to the stranger, excite no pleasure in the mind of the inhabitants. Their feelings are always mixed with a sentiment of fear, or the recollection of misfortune.

But in considering the love of the picturesque, we must not overlook one of the most engaging shapes in which it presents itself to our notice. The love of landscape painting is so intimately connected with the love of the picturesque; the two tastes are so much conversant with the same objects, they are so aiding and assisting to each other in their cultivation, that they are seldom found to exist separately. The people which has been distinguished for the one has generally been equally celebrated for the other. A review of the history of landscape-painting will greatly assist our inquiry. By reflecting on the character and circumstances, and state of society of those among whom it has most flourished; by observing how little it has been attended to by others who seem to have had peculiar advantages for its cultivation, we shall be enabled to trace the causes to which it owes its birth, and to account for its greater or less diffusion at different periods and in different countries.

The Ancients come first in order of time, but they offer little to gratify our curiosity. They who lived almost entirely out of doors, who were for ever surrounded with the works of nature, while yet they had lost none of their freshness, seem to have been little affected by their contemplation. Descriptions of scenery are not common among their poets, and their painters almost confined themselves to historical subjects. The only pictures, of which any remembrance is preserved, were representations of the human figure. The correctness of the drawing, and the beauty of the figures, shew the paintings at Herculaneum to have been the work of no ordinary artists; yet they are entirely wanting in perspective. No efforts of the Chinese pencil are more deficient. But as landscape cannot exist without per

spective, we may be sure that it was little esteemed and little studied by the Ancients.

Though modern Italy be rich in almost every species of talent, yet the genius of her painters is the freshest flower in the garland of her fame. Her landscape, the most beautiful of Europe, sets at defiance all the tame efforts of humble prose to do it justice. It can only be adequately described in the magic strains of the poet of enchantment. But the pen has been more fortunate than the pencil. The

Culte pianure e delicati colli;

Chiare acque, ombrose ripe e prati molli;
Vaghi boschetti di soavi allori,

Di palmi e d'amenissime mortelle,

Cedri e aranci che hanno frutti e fiori
Contesti in varie forme e tatte belle;
Purpuree rose, e bianchi gigli

Che tepida aura fresche ognora serba

have excited little enthusiasm in the minds of her artists. Landscape painters are almost wanting to her glory.

Salvator Rosa was, indeed, born at Naples; but the gay scenes of the happy Campania were seldom transferred to his canvas. In vain the most brilliant of suns lighted up the golden landscape: in vain the light felucca spread forth the ample volume of her Lateen sails, and glided on the smooth surface of the most beautiful of bays. He heeded them not. Objects which were always before his eyes were too familiar to excite emotion in his mind. They were stranger scenes that roused his genius. They were the deep glens and fastnesses of the Apennines, with their gloom and their caverns, and their banditti, that stirred his inmost soul, and gave its witchcraft to his pencil. The son of the gay-hearted Naples felt no pleasure but in the wildest and most savage of scenery.