reason. But it must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of nature is an innocent amusement; and some praise must be allowed by the most supercilious observer to him who does best what such multitudes are contending to do well."

But though England had no such landscape-gardener as Shenstone, it possessed denizens not a few, who thought more highly of their own taste than of his; and so the history of the Leasowes, for the ten years that immediately succeeded his death, is a history of laborious attempts to improve what he had rendered perfect. This history we find recorded by Goldsmith, in one of his less known essays. Considerable allowance must be made for the peculiar humour of the writer, and its exaggerative tendency; for no story, real or imaginary, ever lost in the hands of Goldsmith; but there is at least an air of truth about

its general details. "The garden," he says, "was completely grown and finished: the marks of every art were covered up by the luxuriance of nature-the winding walks were grown dark -the brooks assumed a natural selvedge-and the rocks were covered with moss. Nothing now remained but to enjoy the beauties of the place, when the poor poet died, and his garden was obliged to be sold for the benefit of those who had contributed to its embellishment.

"The beauties of the place had now for some time been celebrated as well in prose as in verse; and all men of taste wished for so envied a spot, where every turn was marked with the poet's pencil, and every walk awakened genius and meditation. The first purchaser was one Mr. Truepenny, a button-maker, who was possessed of three thousand pounds, and was willing also to be possessed of taste and genius.

"As the poet's ideas were for the natural wildness of the landscape, the button-maker's were for the more regular productions of art. He conceived, perhaps, that as it is a beauty in a button to be of a regular pattern, so the same regularity ought to obtain in a landscape. Be that as it will, he employed

the shears to some purpose: he clipped up the hedges, cut down the gloomy walks, made vistas on the stables and hogsties, and showed his friends what a man of true taste should always be doing.

"The next candidate for taste and genius was a captain of a ship, who bought the garden because the former possessor could find nothing more to mend: but unfortunately he had taste too. His great passion lay in building-in making Chinese temples and cage-work summer-houses. As the place before had the appearance of retirement, and inspired meditation, he gave it a more peopled air; every turning presented a cottage or icehouse, or a temple; the garden was converted into a little city, and it only wanted inhabitants to give it the air of a village in the East Indies.

"In this manner, in less than ten years the improvement has gone through the hands of as many proprietors, who were all willing to have taste, and to show their taste too. As the place had received its best finishing from the hands of the first possessor, so every innovator only lent a hand to do mischief. Those parts which were obscure, have been enlightened; those walks which led naturally, have been twisted into serpentine windings. The colour of the flowers of the field is not more various than the variety of tastes that have been employed here, and all in direct contradiction to the original aim of its first improver. Could the original possessor but revive, with what a sorrowful heart would he look upon his favourite spot again! He would scarcely recollect a dryad or a wood-nymph of his former acquaintance; and might perhaps find himself as much a stranger in his own plantation as in the deserts of Siberia."

The after history of the Leasowes is more simple. Time, as certainly as taste, though much less offensively, had been busy with seat and temple, obelisk and root-house; and it was soon found that, though the poet had planted, he had not built, for posterity. The ingenious antiquary of Wheatfield discovered in

the parsonage-house garden of his village, some time about the middle of the last century, a temple of lath and plaster, which had been erected, he held, by the old Romans, and dedicated to Claudius Cæsar; but the lath and plaster of these degenerate days do not last quite so long. The progress of dilapidation was further accelerated by the active habits of occasional visitors. Young men tried their strength by setting their shoulders to the obelisks; and old women demonstrated their wisdom by carrying home pieces of the seats to their fires: a robust young fellow sent poor Mr. Somerville's urn a-spinning down the hill; a vigorous iconoclast beheaded the piping fawn at a blow. There were at first large additions made to the inscriptions, of a kind which Shenstone could scarce have anticipated; but anon inscriptions and additions too began to disappear; the tablet in the dingle suddenly failed to compliment Mr. Spence; and Virgil's grove no longer exhibited the name of Virgil. "The ruinated Priory wall" became too thoroughly a ruin; the punchbowl was shivered on its stand; the iron ladle wrenched from beside the ferruginous spring; in short, much about the time when young Walter Scott was gloating over Dodsley, and wishing he too had a property of which to make a plaything, what Shenstone had built and inscribed on the Leasowes could be known but from Dodsley alone. His artificialities had perished, like the artificialities of another kind of the poets his contemporaries; and nothing survived in his more material works, as in their writings, save those delightful portions in which he had but given body and expression to the harmonies of nature.

CHAPTER X

Shenstone's verses-The singular unhappiness of his paradise-English cider-Scotch and English dwellings contrasted-The nailers of Hales Owen; their politics a century ago Competition of the Scotch nailers; unsuccessful, and why-Samuel Salt, the Hales Owen poet-Village Church-Salt-works at Droitwich; their great antiquity-Appearance of the village-Problem furnished by the salt deposits of England; various theories-Rock-salt deemed by some a volcanic product; by others the deposition of an overcharged sea; by yet others the produce of vast lagoons-Leland -The manufacture of salt from sea-water superseded, even in Scotland, by the rocksalt of England.

It was now near sunset, and high time that I should be leaving the Leasowes, to "take mine ease in mine inn." By the way, one of the most finished among Shenstone's lesser pieces is a paraphrase on the apophthegm of old Sir John. We find Dr. Samuel Johnson, as exhibited in the chronicle of Boswell, conning it over with meikle glee in an inn at Chapelhouse; and it was certainly no easy matter to write verse that satisfied the Doctor.

"To thee, fair Freedom! I retire,

From flatt'ry, cards, and dice, and din;
Nor art thou found in mansions higher
Than the low cot or humble inn.

"Tis here with boundless power I reign;
And every health which I begin
Converts dull port to bright champaigne :
Such freedom crowns it at an inn.
I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
I fly from falsehood's specious grin;
Freedom I love, and form I hate,
And choose my lodgings at an inn.

Here, waiter, take my sordid ore,、

Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
It buys what courts have not in store-
It buys me freedom at an inn.

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn."

Ere, however, quitting the grounds to buy freedom at the "Plume of Feathers," I could not avoid indulging in a natural enough reflection on the unhappiness of poor Shenstone. Never, as we may see from his letters, was there a man who enjoyed life less. He was not vicious; he had no overpowering passion to contend with; he could have had his Phillis had he chosen to take her; his fortune, nearly three hundred a year, should have been quite ample enough, in the reign of George the Second, to enable a single man to live, and even, with economy, to furnish a considerable surplus for making gimcracks in the Leasowes; he had many amusements-he drew tastefully, had a turn, he tells us, for natural history, wrote elegant verse and very respectable prose; the noble and the gifted of the land honoured him with their notice; above all, he lived in a paradise, the beauties of which no man could better appreciate ; and his most serious employment, like that of our common ancestor in his unfallen state, was "to dress and to keep it.' And yet even before he had involved his affairs, and the dun came to the door, he was an unhappy man. "I have lost my road to happiness," we find him saying, ere he had completed his thirty-fourth year. Nay, we even find him quite aware of the turning at which he had gone wrong. "Instead," he adds, "of pursuing the way to the fine lawns and venerable oaks which distinguish the region of happiness, I am got into the pitiful parterre-garden of amusement, and view the nobler scenes at a distance. I think I can see the road, too, that leads the better way, and can show it to others; but I have got many miles to measure back before I can get into it myself, and no kind of resolution to take a single step. My chief amusements at present are the same they have long been, and lie scattered about my farm. The French have what they call a