IT seems to me that the neglect, which prevails in the works of modern improvers, of all that is picturesque, is owing to their exclusive attention to high polish and flowing lines; the charms of which they are so engaged in contemplating, that they overlook two of the most fruitful sources of human pleasure: the first, that great and universal source of pleasure, variety--the power of which is independent of beauty, but without which even beauty itself soon ceases to please; the second, intricacy---a quality which, though distinct from variety, is so connected and blended with it, that the one can hardly exist without the other. According to the idea I have formed of it, intricacy in landscape might be defined, that disposition of objects, which, by a partial and uncertain concealment, excites and nourishes curiosity*. Variety can hardly require a definition, though from the practice of many layers-out of ground, one might suppose it did. Upon the whole, it appears to me, that as intricacy in the disposition, and variety in the forms, the tints, and the lights and shadows of objects, are * Many persons, who take little concern in the intricacy of oaks, beeches, and thorns, may feel the effects of partial concealment in more interesting objects, and may have experienced how differently the passions are moved by an open licentious display of beauties, and by the unguarded disorder which sometimes escapes the care of modesty, and which coquetry so successfully imitates: Parte appar delle mamme acerbe & crude, the great characteristics of picturesque scenery; so monotony and baldness, are the great defects of improved places. Nothing would place this in so distinct a point of view, as a comparison between some familiar scene in its natural and picturesque state, and in that which would be its improved state according to the present mode of gardening. All painters who have imitated the more confined scenes of nature, have been fond of making studies from old neglected bye roads and hollow ways; and perhaps there are few spots that in so small a compass, have a greater variety of that sort of beauty called picturesque; but, I believe, the instances are very rare of painters, who have turned out volunteers into a gentleman's walk or drive, either when made between artificial banks, or when the natural sides or banks have been improved. I shall endeavour to examine whence it happens, that a painter looks coldly on what is very generally admired, and discovers a thousand interesting objects, where an improver passes on with indifference, if not with disgust. Perhaps what is most immediately striking in a lane of this kind is its intricacy. Any winding road, indeed, especially where there are banks, must necessarily have some degree of intricacy; but in a dressed lane every effort of art seems directed against that disposition of the ground: the sides are so regularly sloped, so regularly planted, and the space, when there is any, between them and the road, so uniformly levelled; the sweeps of the road so plainly artificial, the verges of grass that bound it so nicely edged; the whole, in short, has such an appearance of having been made by a receipt, that curiosity, that most active principle of pleasure, is almost extinguished. But in hollow lanes and bye roads, all the leading features, and a thousand circumstances of detail, promote the natural intricacy of the ground: the turns are sud den and unprepared; the banks sometimes broken and abrupt; sometimes smooth, and gently, but not uniformly sloping; now wildly over-hung with thickets of trees and bushes; now loosely skirted with wood: no regular verge of grass, no cut edges, no distinct lines of separation; all is mixed and blended together, and the border of the road itself, shaped by the mere tread of passengers and animals, is as unconstrained as the footsteps that formed it. Even the tracks of the wheels (for no circumstance is indifferent) contribute to the picturesque effect of the whole: the varied lines they describe just mark the way among trees and bushes; often some obstacle, a cluster of low thorns, a furze-bush, a tussuck, a large stone, forces the wheels into sudden and intricate turns; often a group of trees or a thicket, occasions the road to separate into two parts, leaving a sort of island in the middle. These are a few of the picturesque accidents, which in lanes and bye roads attract |