works and wisdom of the Chiefe (for Burnet describes him as a difciple of Confucius, and Mandarin in religion), would have bestowed high commendation on the garden at Pekin, if he had perused the letter of the jefuit Attiret from thence, tranflated by Mr. Spence; the appetite for which fashion is roughly ridiculed in an heroic epiftle to a great English architect. But, peace be to the memory of Sir William Temple! that good Englishman and accomplished character, whofe love for a garden was fo fincere, that he ordered his heart to be buried under his fun-dial, in his garden at Moorpark. The Vale of Tempe, at the foot of mount Hamus in Theffaly, the object of Virgil's enthufiafm, and which is fo beautifully defcribed by Elian, must have been a charming fpot, where Art was only the handmaid of Nature, This territory, according to all travellers, is now infefted with every thing that is offenfive and dangerous. The gardens of Aranjuez near Madrid (the Tempe perhaps of a future age) employ the delineating pen of Mr. Dillon, for the pleasure they af : afforded him, "where Art and Nature go hand in hand with the moft grateful and . pleafing fimplicity." If a name inferred merit, a piece of ground that was occupied by the noble Author of the Characteristics, at Ryegate, ought to have been a Southcote's, an Aiflabie's, a Shenftone's, or a Pelham's, in miniature, for it was called, "All the world in an acre of ground." Some pretty lines of Andrew Marvel, upon his garden, prefs upon the memory, and call for transcription : Fair quiet! have I found you here! And innocence your fifter dear! Mistaken long I fought you then In bufy companies of men- To this delicious folitude. He who accepted wages from his conftituents at Hull (and he was the last representative who was literally a fervant to the people), who borrowed a guinea immediately after he refused a thousand pounds of Lord Treasurer Danby, had probably a garden for meditation, and not for fhow. Within less than half a century, Nature, Pope, and Kent (Pope would modeftly have: faid, Kent and Nature), fet the fashion for gardening (the art of gardening, in Mr. Walpole's phrafe, is the art of creating landfcape) that ftill prevails in England, and may be travelling through our northern counties into Ruffia, whither painting, ftatuary, architecture, and all the arts of life, are going or are gone; where perhaps, if there was a longer fummer and a fhorter winter, the enterprizing Emprefs might foon be able to give law to the whole world. What could not be perfected at Moorpark, at Bulstrode, at Woodstock, or at Stowe, by the creative imagination and pencil of a Brown, who was heir to the taste of Pope and of Kent? "Where Wealth inthron'd in Nature's pride, With Taste and Beauty by his fide, And holding Plenty's horn, And Beauty to adorn." This ftanza is from the title-page of Mr. Whately's book on gardening, and was writ ten ten by Mr. Frampton, a man of fingular capacity, of extensive memory, and who preached very eloquently from the pulpit without notes. Before this fubject can be parted with, it must be obferved, that Milton, who, in the approved expreffion, feems, with the pro-, phetic eye of tafte, to have conceived, and to have foreseen modern gardening (for is not his; pen a pencil in his fourth book?) and that Pope, not a profeffional man, like Le Nôtre, or Wife, or London, increased the paffion for the knowledge of laying out pleasure-grounds, and that the latter, by his practice and his, poetry, has rooted out the taste for Italian and French frippery and High and Low Dutch grotesque. ! A Was Horace happier (merrier he probably was) at his villa on the Tibur, or Shakspeare on his Avon, than Pope on the banks of the Thames? Pope had the neceffary ingre dients for placid pleasures; a mind capable of meditation and reflection, and the poffeffion of retired leifure, the greatest gift, fays Hume, the gods have to bestow on mortals. Here poffefs a rare felicity (the wifh of all lite. rary valetudinarians) fays Pope, "Maintain a poet's dignity and eafe, In the year 1726 Pope had like to have been drowned, in returning, in a dark night, from Dawley to Twickenham, in Lord Bolingbroke's coach and fix, which was overturned in a piece of water. Horace escaped being crushed to death, by the fall of a tree, in his garden, and was near vifiting the fhades below, as he defcribes the incident in an occafional ode. Pope was faved by the activity of the poftilion, who broke the glass to get him out. He loft the use of two of the fingers of his left hand, and was under the care of Arbuthnot and St. André. So near was the public being deprived of his valuable life! The philofopher, fays the excellent Hurd, talks without experience; the man of the world, without principle. Pope became qualified as much as any man to understand, as well as to catch, the manners living as they rife. What he could only know in the abftract at Binfield (to hold an expreffion of the logicians) he knew in the concrete at Twic |