is not wanted. If rustic bloom and native simplicity be deemed more desirable,-wash the face, and comb the hair in flowing ringlets, and such ornament will be had in its highest perfection. If that elegance of carriage, and gracefulness of deportment, which flow from education and a refined understanding, be thought requisite, Art may be employed in giving this grace and elegance; for thus far she may go with propriety. But, if she more, she does too much.

do

It would be needless to add, that Art may be employed in concealing, or in doing away, the deformities of Nature. But, even in this, she ought to be cautiously circumspect: for, throughout, there is more danger of doing too much, than too little; and nothing should ever be attempted, which cannot be performed in a masterly manner.

SECTION THE SECOND.

HUNTING BOX.

HERE little is required of Art. Hunting may be called the amusement of Nature; and the place appropriated to it ought to be no farther altered, from its natural state, than decency and conve

niency require:-With men who live in the present age of refinement, " a want of decency is a want of sense."

THE style throughout, should be masculine. If shrubs be required, they should be of the hardier sorts; the Box, the Holly, the Laurustinus. The trees should be the Oak and the Beech, which give, in Autumn, an agreeable variety of foliage, and anticipate, as it were, the season of diversion. A suite of paddocks should be seen from the house; and if a view of distant covers can be caught, the background will be compleat. The stable, the kennel, and the leaping bar, are the factitious accompaniments; in the construction of which simplicity, subtantialness, and conveniency, should prevail.

SECTION THE THIRD.

ORNAMENTED COTTAGE.

NEATNESS and simplicity ought to mark the style of this rational retreat. Ostentation and show should be cautiously avoided; even elegance should not be attempted; though it may not be hid, if it offer itself spotaneously.

NOTHING, however, should appear vulgar, nor should simplicity be pared down to baldness; every thing whimsical or expensive ought to be studiously avoided;-chasteness and frugality should appear in every part.

NEAR the house, a studied neatness may take place; but, at a distance, negligence should rather be the characteristic.

If a taste for botany lead to a collection of native shrubs and flowers, a shrubery will be requisite; but, in this, every thing should be native. A gaudy exotic ought not to be admitted; nor should the lawn be kept close shaven; its flowers should be permitted to blow; and the herbage, when mown, ought to be carried off, and applied to some useful purpose.

In the artifical accompaniments, ornament should be subordinate; utility must preside. The buildings, if any appear, should be those in actual use in rural economics. If the hovei be wanted, let it appear; and, as a side screen, the barn and rick yard are admissible; while the dove house and poultry yard may enter more freely into the composition.

IN fine, the ORNAMENTED COTTAGE ought to exhibit cultivated Nature, in the first stage of

refinement. It ranks next above the farm house. The plain garb of rusticity may be set off to advantage; but the studied ornaments of art ought not to appear. That becoming neatness, and those domestic conveniencies, which render the rural life agreeable to a cultivated mind, are all that should be aimed at.

SECTION THE FOURTH.

THE VILLA.

HERE, a style very different from the preceding, ought to prevail: It ought to be elegant, rich, or grand, according to the style of the house itself, and the state of the surrounding country; the principal business of the artist being to connect these two, in such a manner, that the one shall not appear naked or flareing, nor the other desolate and inhospitable.

If the house be stately, and the adjacent country rich and highly cultivated, a shrubery may intervene, in which Art may shew her utmost skill. Here, the artist may even be permitted to play at

landscape: for a place of this kind being supposed to be small, the intention principally ornamental, and the point of view, probably, confined simply to the house, side screens may be formed, and near grounds laid out, suitable to the best distance that can be caught.

If buildings, or other artificial ornaments abound in the offscape, so as to mark it strongly, they ought also to appear, more or less, in the near grounds: if the distance abound with wood, the near grounds should be thickened, lest baldness should offend; if open and naked, elegance rather than richness ought to be studied, lest heaviness should appear.

It is far from being any part of our plan to cavil unnecessarily at artists, whether living or dead; we cannot, however, refrain from expressing a concern for the almost total neglect of the principles here laid down, in the prevailing practice of a late celebrated artist, in ornamenting the vicinages of villas. We mention it the rather, as Mr. BROWN seems to have set the fashion, and we are sorry to find it copied by the inferior artists of the day. Without any regard to uniting the house with the adjacent country, and, indeed, seemingly without any regard whatever to the offscape, one invariable plan of embellishment prevails; namely, that of