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great s ize, there is a deficiency of that venerable dignity which
a grove always ought to possess.
These woodS are evidently considered rather as objects of
profit than of pidturesque beauty; and it is a circumstance to be,
regretted, that pecuniary advantage and ornament are seldorm
strictly compatible with each other. The underwood cannot be
protected from cattle without fences, and if the fence be a live
hedge, the trees lose half their beauty, while: they appear con.
fined Within the unsightly boundary. To remedy this defect, the
quick fence at SHARDELOEs has, in many places, been removed,
and a rail placed at a- little distance within the wood; but the
distance is so small, that the original outline is nearly as distinct
as if the fence were still visible, and the regular Undulations of
those lines give an artificial appearance to the whole scenery.
A painter's landscape depends upon his management of light
and shade: if these be too smoothly blended with each other,
the picture wants force; if too violently contrasted, it is called
hard. The light and shade of natural landscape requires no less
to be studied than that of painting. The shade of a landscape-
gardener is wood, and his lights proceed either from a lawn,
from water, or from buildings. If on the lawn too many single
trees be scattered, the effect becomes fittered, broken, and
diffuse; on the contrary, if the general surface of the lawn be
too naked, and the outline of the woods form an uniform heavy
boundary between the lawn and the horizon, the eye of taste
will discover an unpleasing harshness in the composition, which
no degree of beauty, either in the shape of the ground or in the
outline of the woods, can entirely counteract. In this state-the
natural landscape, like an unfinished picture, will appear to