SUBJECT THE SECOND.

RURAL ORNAMENT.

DIVISION THE FIRST.

HISTORY OF THE RURAL ART.

INTRODUCTION.

MANKIND no sooner find themselves in fast possession of the necessaries of life, than they begin to feel a want of its conveniences; and these obtained, seldom fail of indulging in one or more of its various refinements. Some men delight in the luxuries of the imagination; others in those of the senses. One man finds his wants supplied in the delicacies of the table, while another has recourse to perfumes and essences for relief: few men are insensible to the gratifications of the ear; and men VOL. I.

in general are susceptible of those of the eye. The imitative arts of painting and sculpture have been the study and delight of civilized nations, in all ages but the art of embellishing Nature, herself, has been reserved for this age, and for this

nation!

A FACT the more astonishing, as ornamented Nature is as much superior to a Painting or a Statue, as a Reality is to a Representation;"

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as the Man himself is to his Portrait. That the striking features--the beauties--of Nature, whenever they have been seen, have always been admired, by men of sense and refinement, is undoubtedly true; but why the good offices of art, in setting off those features to advantage, should have been so long confined to the human person alone, is, of all other facts in the History of Arts and Sciences, the most extraordinary.

THE Translator of D'Ermenonville's Essay Landscape has attempted to prove, in 'an introductory discourse, that the art is nothing new, for that it was known to the Antients, though not practised. But the evidences, he produces, go no farther than to shew, that the Antients were admirers of Nature in a state of wildness; for, whenever they attempted to embellish Nature, they appear to have been guided by a kind of Otaheitean

taste; as the gardens of the Greeks and Romans, like those of modern nations (until of late years in this country), convey to us no other idea, than that of Nature tatoo'd*.

MR. BURGH, in a Note to his ingenious Commentary upon Mr. Mason's beautiful poem, The English Garden, confirms us in these ideas; and, by a quotation from the Younger Pliny, shews the just notions the Antients entertained of the powers of human invention, in associating and polishing the rougher scenes of Nature: for, after giving us a beautiful description of the natural scenery round his Tuscan villa, upon the banks of the Tiber, he acknowledges "the view before him to resemble "a picture beautifully composed, rather than a "work of Nature accidentally delivered."

WE have been told that the English Garden is but a copy of the Gardens of the Chinese: this, however, is founded in envy rather than in truth;

* The inhabitants of Otaheitee, an island in the Southern hemisphere, ornament their bodies by making punctures in the skin with a sharp-pointed instrument, and call it tatowing. The African Negroes are still grosser in their ideas of ornament, gashing their cheeks and temples in a manner similar to that practised by the English Butcher in ornamenting at shoulder of mutton, or a Dutch gardener in embellishing the environs of a mansion.

for though the Chinese style of Gardening may not admit of tatooings and topiary works*, it has as little to do with natural scenery as the garden of an antient Roman, or a modern Dutchman: THE ART OF assisting NATURE is, undoubtedly, all our own.

It cannot fail of proving highly interesting to our Readers, to trace the rise of this delightful Art.

MR. WALPOLE, in his Anecdotes of Painting in England, has favoured the Public with A History of the modern Taste in Gardening. A pen guided by so masterly a hand, must ever be productive of information and entertainment, when employed upon a subject so truly interesting, as that which is now before us. Desirous of conveying to our Readers all the information, which we can compress with propriety within the limits of our plan, we wished to have given the substance of this valuable paper; but finding it, already, in the language of simplicity, and being aware of the mischiefs which generally ensue in meddling with the productions of genius, we had only one alternative ; either wholly to transcribe, or wholly to reject. This we could not do, in strict justice to our

* Trees carved by a Topiarious into the form of beasts birds, &c.