among them, that I should have been sorry to have had the whole covered with the finest wood; nay, I could hardly have wished for trees the most happily disposed, and of course should have dreaded those which are usually placed there by art. An improver has rarely such dread: in general the first idea that strikes him, is that of distinguishing his property; nor is he easy till he has put his pitch-mark on all the summits. Indeed this gratifies his desire of celebrity, by exciting the curiosity and admiration of the vulgar; and travellers of taste will naturally be provoked to enquire, though from another motive, to whom those unfortunate hills belong.

It is melancholy to compare the slow progress of beauty, with the upstart growth of deformity; trees and woods planted in the most judicious style, will not for years strongly attract the painter's notice, though the planter, like a fond parent, feels the greatest tenderness for his children, at the time they are least interesting to others *

* Madame de Sevignè, whose maternal tenderness seems

But to the deformer (a name too often synonymous to the improver) it is not necessary that his trees should have attained their full growth; as soon as he has planted them in his round fences, his principal work is done; the eye which used to follow with delight the bold sweep of outline, and all the playful undulation of ground, finds itself suddenly checked and its progress stopt, even by these embryo clumps. They have the same effect on the great features of nature, as an excrescence on those of the human face; in which, though the proportion of one feature to another greatly varies in different persons, yet these differences, like others of a similar kind in inanimate nature, give variety of character without disturbing the general accord of the parts but let there be a wart or a pimple on any prominent feature—no dignity or beauty of countenance can detach the attention from it; that little, round,

to have extended itself to her plantations, says, " Je fais jetter a bas de grands arbres, parce qu'ils font ombrage, ou qu'ils incommodent mes jeunes enfants.”

distinct lump, while it disgusts the eye, has a fascinating power of fixing it on its own deformity. This is precisely the effect of clumps the beauty or grandeur of the surrounding parts only serve to make them more horribly conspicuous; and the dark tint of the Scotch fir, of which they are generally composed, as it separates them by colour, as well as by form, from every other object, adds the last finish.

But even large plantations of firs, when they are not the natural and the prevailing trees of the country, have a harsh and heavy look, from their not harmonizing with the rest of the landscape; and this is particularly the case, when, as it sometimes → happens, one side of a valley is planted solely with firs, the other with deciduous trees. The common expressions of a heavy colour, or a heavy form, shew that the eye feels an impression from objects analogous to that of weight: thence arises the necessity of preserving what may be called a proper balance, so that the quantity of dark colour on one side, or in one part of

the scene, should not in any striking de gree outweigh the other; and this is a very material point in the art of painting. If in a picture, the one half were to be light and airy both in the forms and in the tints, and the other half one black heavy lump, the most ignorant person would probably be displeased, though he might not know upon what principle, with the want of balance, and of harmony; for those harsh discordant forms and colours, not only act more forcibly from being brought together within a small compass, but also, because in painting they are not authorized by fashion, or rendered familiar by custom.

One principal cause of the extreme heaviness of fir plantations is their closeness. A planter very naturally wishes to produce some appearance of wood as soon as possible; he therefore sets his trees very near together, and so they generally remain, for he has seldom the resolution to thin them sufficiently: they are consequently all drawn up together nearly to the same height; and as their heads touch each

other, no variety, no distinction of form can exist, but the whole is one enormous, unbroken, unvaried mass of black. It's appearance is indeed so uniformly dead and heavy, that instead of those cheering ideas which arise from the fresh luxuriant foliage, and the lighter tints of deciduous trees, it has something of that dreary im age, that extinction of form and colour, which Milton felt from blindness; when he who had viewed objects with a painter's eye, as he described them with a poet's fire, was

Presented with an universal blank

Of nature's works.

The inside of these plantations fully answers to the dreary appearance of the outside. Of all dismal scenes it seems to me the most likely for a man to hang himself in, though he would find some difficulty in the execution; for, amidst the endless multitude of stems, there is rarely a single side branch to which a rope could be fastened. The whole wood is a col