With many a sinuous bay and island green,
At less expense of labor and of land,
Will give thee equal beauty: seldom art
Can emulate that broad and bold extent

Which charms in native lakes; and, failing there,
Her works betray their character and name,
And dwindle into pools.

PONDS; HOW TO PLACE THEM.

Not that our strain, Fastidious, shall disdain a small expanse Of stagnant fluid, in some scene confined, Circled with varied shade, where, through the leaves, The half-admitted sunbeam trembling plays On its clear bosom ; where aquatic fowl Of varied tribe and varied feather sail ; And where the finny race their glittering scales Unwillingly reveal there, there alone Where bursts the general prospect on our eye, We scorn these watery patches: Thames himself, Seen in disjointed spots, where sallows hide His first bold presence, seems a string of pools: A chart and compass must explain his course.

HOW TO FORM A RIVER.

He, who would seize the river's sovereign charm, Must wind the moving mirror through his lawn Ev'n to remotest distance; deep must delve The gravelly channel that prescribes its course; Closely conceal each terminating bound By hill or shade opposed; and to its bank Lifting the level of the copious stream, Must there retain it. But, if thy faint springs Refuse this large supply, steel thy firm soul With stoic pride; imperfect charms despise : Beauty, like Virtue, knows no grovelling mean.

TANKS AND CANALS ON TERRACES SATIRIZED.

Who but must pity that penurious taste, Which down the quick-descending vale prolongs, Slope below slope, a stiff and unlinked chain Of flat canals; then leads the stranger's eye To some predestined station, there to catch Their seeming union, and the fraud approve? Who but must change that pity into scorn, If down each verdant slope a narrow flight Of central steps decline, where the spare stream Steals trickling; or, withheld by cunning skill, Hoards its scant treasures, till the master's nod Decree its fall then down the formal stairs It leaps with short-lived fury; wasting there, Poor prodigal! what many a summer's rain And many a winter's snow shall late restore.

HOW TO INSURE A PERMANENT CASCADE.

Learn that, whene'er, in some sublimer scene,
Imperial Nature of her headlong floods
Permits our imitation, she herself
Prepares their reservoir; concealed perchance
In neighboring hills, where first it well behoves
Our toil to search, and studiously augment
The watery store with springs and sluices drawn

From pools, that on the heath drink up the rain.
Be these collected, like the miser's gold,
In one increasing fund, nor dare to pour,
Down thy impending mound, the bright cascade,
Till richly sure of its redundant fall.

EMBANKMENT FOR A CASCADE.—BRINDLEY'S FIRST CANAL.
IRWELL. THE FALL. — TEES.

That mound to raise alike demands thy toil, Ere Art adorn its surface. Here adopt That facile mode which his inventive powers! First planned who led to rich Mancunium's mart His long-drawn line of navigated stream. Stupendous task! in vain stood towering hills Opposed; in vain did ample Irwell pour Her tide transverse: he pierced the towering hill, He bridged the ample tide, and high in air, And deep through earth, his freighted barge he bore. This mode shall temper ev'n the lightest soil Firm to thy purpose. Then let Taste select The unhewn fragments, that may give its front A rocky rudeness; pointed some, that there The frothy spouts may break; some slanting smooth That there in silver sheet the wave may slide. Here too infix some moss-grown trunks of oak Romantic, turned by gelid lakes to stone, Yet so disposed as if they owed their change To what they now control. Then open wide Thy flood-gates; then let down thy torrent: then Rejoice; as if the thundering Tees himself Reigned there amid his cataracts sublime.

WHAT TO DO WITH A RILL. PREFERABLE TO A LAKE. — THE LIN.

And thou hast cause for triumph! Kings themWith all a nation's wealth, an army's toil, [selves, If Nature frown averse, shall ne'er achieve Such wonders: Nature's was the glorious gift; Thy art her menial handmaid. Listening youths! To whose ingenuous hearts I still address The friendly strain, from such severe attempt Let Prudence warn you. Turn to this clear rill, Which, while I bid your bold ambition cease, Runs murmuring at my side: O'er many a rood Your skill may lead the wanderer; many a mound Of pebbles raise, to fret her in her course Impatient louder then will be her : For she will 'plain, and gurgle, as she goes, As does the widowed ring-dove. Take, vain Pomp! Thy lakes, thy long canals, thy trim cascades, Beyond them all true taste will dearly prize This little dimpling treasure.

song :

THE NAIAD LINEIA. CAVES. STALACTITES.

Mark the cleft, Through which she bursts to day. Behind that rock A Naiad dwells: Lineia 3 is her name;

1 The allusion is to Brindley, who made the Bridgewater canal to Manchester (Mancunium); the first in England. He invented 'puddling,' for dams, without clay.

2 The fall of the Tees, near Middleton, in Yorkshire, is deemed one of the greatest in England.

3 The Lin, whence Lineia is formed, is a little trout-stream on an estate of the author's friend, at Papplewick, on the edge of Sherwood forest, in Nottinghamshire, England.

And she has sisters in contiguous cells,
Who never saw the sun. Fond Fancy's eye,
That inly gives locality and form

To what she prizes best, full oft pervades
Those hidden caverns, where pale chrysolites
And glittering spars dart a mysterious gleam
Of inborn lustre, from the garish day
Unborrowed. There, by the wild Goddess led,
Oft have I seen them bending o'er their urns,
Chanting alternate airs of Dorian mood,

While smooth they combed their moist cerulean locks
With shells of living pearl. Yet, let me own,

To these, or classic deities like these,
From very childhood was I prone to pay
Harmless idolatry.

THE AUTHOR BORN ON THE HUMBER; EDUCATED AT CAM-
BRIDGE.ALLUSION TO HIS POETRY.

My infant eyes

First opened on that bleak and boisterous shore,
Where Humber weds the nymphs of Trent and Ouse
To his and Ocean's Tritons: thence full soon
My youth retired, and left the busy strand
To Commerce and to Care. In Margaret's grove,1
Beneath whose time-worn shade old Camus sleeps,
Was next my tranquil station : Science there
Sat musing; and for those that loved the lore
Pointed, with mystic wand, to truths involved
In geometric symbols, scorning those,
Perchance too much, who wooed the thriftless muse.
Here, though in warbling whisper oft I breathed
The lay, were wanting, what young Fancy deems
The life-springs of her being, rocks, and caves,
And huddling brooks, and torrent-falls divine.
In quest of these, at Summer's vacant hour,
Pleased would I stray; when, in a northern vale,
So chance ordained, a Naiad sad I found
Robbed of her silver vase; I soothed the nymph
With song of sympathy, and cursed the fiend
Who stole the gift of Thetis. Hence the cause
Why, favored by the blue-eyed sisterhood,
They soothe with songs my solitary ear.

LESSONS

WATER. ITS POWERS AND PRAISES. — ITS GRATITUDE, BENEVOLENCE, HUMILITY, INDUSTRY, FREEDOM.

Nor is Lineia silent-Long,' she cries, Too long has man waged sacrilegious war With the vexed elements, and chief with that, Which elder Thales, and the bard of Thebes, Held first of things terrestial; nor misdeemed : For, when the Spirit creative deigned to move, He moved upon the waters. O revere Our power for were its vital force withheld, Where then are Vegetation's vernal bloom, Where its autumnal wealth? but we are kind As powerful; 0 let reverence lead to love, And both to emulation! Not a rill, That winds its sparkling current o'er the plain,

OF AND

1 St. John's College, in Cambridge, founded by Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII.

2 Alluding to Mason's Ode to a Water Nymph, written a year or two after his admission to the university.

Reflecting to the sun bright recompense
For every beam he lends, but reads thy soul
A generous lecture. Not a pansy pale,
That drinks its daily nurture from that rill,
But breathes in fragrant accents to thy soul,
So, by thy pity cheered, the languished head
Of poverty might smile.' Whoe'er beheld
Our humble train forsake their native vale
To climb the haughty hill? Ambition, speak!
He blushes, and is mute. When did our streams,
By force unpent, in dull stagnation sleep?
Let Sloth unfold his arms and tell the time.
Or, if the tyranny of Art infringed
Our rights, when did our patient floods submit
Without recoil? Servility retires,

And clinks his gilded chain. 0, learn from us,
And tell it to thy nation, British bard!
Uncurbed Ambition, unresisting Sloth,
And base Dependence, are the fiends accurst
That pull down mighty empires. If they scorn
The awful truth, be thine to hold it dear.
So, through the vale of life, thy flowing hours
Shall glide serene; and, like Lineia's rill,
Their free, yet not licentious course fulfilled,
Sink in the Ocean of Eternity.

BOOK IV.

RECAPITULATION; SUBJECTS OF THE PREVIOUS BOOKS.

Nor yet, divine Simplicity, withdraw That aid auspicious, which, in Art's domain, Already has reformed whate'er prevailed Of foreign, or of false; has led the curve That Nature loves through all her sylvan haunts; Has stolen the fence unnoticed that arrests Her vagrant herds; given lustre to her lawns, Gloom to her groves, and, in expanse serene, Devolved that watery mirror at her foot, O'er which she loves to bend and view her charms.

GRATITUDE OF ANIMALS FOR THE CHANGES MADE BY TASTE.

And tell me, thou, whoe'er hast new-arranged By her chaste rules thy garden, if thy heart Feels not the warm, the self-dilating glow Of true benevolence? Thy flocks, thy herds, That browse luxurious o'er those very plots Which once were barren, bless thee for the change; The birds of air-which thy funereal yews Of shape uncouth, and leaden sons of earth, Antæus and Enceladus, with clubs Uplifted, long had frighted from the sceneNow pleased return; they perch on every spray, And swell their little throats, and warble wild Their vernal minstrelsy; to Heaven and thee It is a hymn of thanks: do thou, like Heaven, With tutelary care reward their song.

ORNAMENTS IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING. ENDURING TASTE AND EPHEMERAL FASHION.

Erewhile the muse, industrious to combine Nature's own charms, with these alone adorned

The Genius of the scene; but other gifts
She has in store, which gladly now she brings,
And he shall proudly wear. Know, when she broke
The spells of Fashion, from the crumbling wreck
Of her enchantments sagely did she cull
Those relics rich of old Vitruvian skill,
With what the sculptor's hand in classic days
Made breathe in brass or marble; these the hag
Had purloined, and disposed in Folly's fane;
To him these trophies of her victory
She bears; and where his awful nod ordains
Conspicuous means to place. He shall direct
Her dubious judgment, from the various hoard
Of ornamental treasures, how to choose
The simplest and the best; on these his seal
Shall stamp great Nature's image and his own,
To charm for unborn ages. Fling the rest
Back to the beldame, bid her whirl them all
In her vain vortex, lift them now to-day,
Now plunge in night, as, through the humid rack
Of April cloud, swift flits the trembling beam.

THE STORY OF ALCANDER, AN ILLUSTRATION OF REFORM IN
GARDENING.

But precepts tire, and this fastidious age Rejects the strain didactic: try we, then, In livelier narrative the truths to veil We dare not dictate. Sons of Albion, hear! The tale I tell is full of strange event, And piteous circumstance; yet deem not ye, If names I feign, that therefore facts are feigned: Nor hence refuse (what most augments the charm Of storied woe) that fond credulity Which binds the attentive soul in closer chains.

At manhood's prime Alcander's duteous tear Fell on his father's grave. The fair domain, Which then became his ample heritage, That father had reformed; each line destroyed Which Belgic dulness planned; and Nature's self Restored to all the rights she wished to claim.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PATERNAL ESTATE OF ALCANDER.THE MANSION; GOTHIC.

Crowning a gradual hill his mansion rose In ancient English grandeur: turrets, spires, And windows, climbing high from base to roof In wide and radiant rows, bespoke its birth Coeval with those rich cathedral fanes (Gothic ill-named) where harmony results From disunited parts; and shapes minute, At once distinct and blended, boldly form One vast, majestic whole. No modern art Had marred with misplaced symmetry the pile.

A FARM-HOUSE AND YARD SHAPED LIKE A CASTLE.

Alcander held it sacred on a height, Which westering to its site the front surveyed, He first his taste employed for there a line Of thinly-scattered beech too tamely broke The blank horizon. 'Draw we round yon knoll,' Alcander cried, in stately Norman mode, A wall embattled; and within its guard

Let every structure needful for a farm
Arise in castle-semblance; the huge barn
Shall with a mock portcullis arm the gate,
Where Ceres entering, o'er the flail-proof floor
In golden triumph rides; some tower rotund
Shall to the pigeons and their callow young
Safe roost afford; and every buttress broad,
Whose proud projection seems a mass of stone,
Give space to stall the heifer, and the steed.
So shall each part, though turned to rural use,
Deceive the eye with those bold feudal forms
That Fancy loves to gaze on.'

AN ICE-HOUSE AND DAIRY BUILT IN THE FORM OF A RUINED
ABBEY.

This achieved,

Now nearer home he calls returning art
To hide the structure rude where Winter pounds
In conic pit his congelations hoar,
That Summer may his tepid beverage cool
With the chill luxury; his dairy, too,
There stands of form unsightly both to veil,
He builds of old disjointed moss-grown stone
A time-struck abbey. An impending grove
Screens it behind with reverential shade;
While bright in front the stream reflecting spreads,
Which winds a mimic river o'er his lawn.
The fane conventual there is dimly seen,
The mitred window, and the cloister pale,
With many a mouldering column; ivy soon
Round the rude chinks her net of foliage spreads;
Its verdant meshes seem to prop the wall.

THE OCEAN FRITH; THE GROTTO.

One native glory, more than all sublime, Alcander's scene possest: 'T was Ocean's selfHe, boisterous king, against the eastern cliffs Dashed his white foam; a verdant vale between Gave splendid ingress to his world of waves. Slanting this vale the mound of that clear stream Lay hid in shade, which slowly laved his lawn : But there set free, the rill resumed its pace, And hurried to the main. The dell it passed Was rocky and retired here art with ease Might lead it o'er a grot, and, filtered there, Teach it to sparkle down its craggy sides, And fall and tinkle on its pebbled floor. Here then that grot he builds, and conchs with spars, Most petrified with branching corallines, In mingled mode arranges: all found here Propriety of place; what viewed the main Might well the shelly gifts of Thetis bear. Not so the inland cave with richer store Than those the neighboring mines and mountains To hang its roof, would seem incongruous pride, And fright the local genius from the scene.

THE SHIPWRECK. THE RESCUED MAIDEN.

[yield

One vernal morn, as urging here the work Surrounded by his hinds, from mild to cold The season changed, from cold to sudden storm, From storm to whirlwind. To the angry main

Swiftly he turns, and sees a laden ship
Dismasted by its rage. Hie, hie we all,'
Alcander cried, 'quick to the neighboring beach.'
They flew; they came, but only to behold,
Tremendous sight! the vessel dash its poop
Amid the boiling breakers. Need I tell

What strenuous arts were used, when all were used,
To save the sinking crew? One tender maid
Alone escaped, saved by Alcander's arm,
Who boldly swam to snatch her from the plank
To which she feebly clung; swiftly to shore,
And swifter to his home, the youth conveyed
His clay-cold prize, who at his portal first
By one deep sigh a sign of life betrayed.

ALCANDER'S UNSUCCESSFUL Love.

A maid so saved, if but by Nature blessed With common charms, had soon awaked a flame More strong than pity, in that melting heart Which pity warmed before. But she was fair As poets picture Hebe, or the Spring; Graceful withal, as if each limb were cast In that ideal mould whence Raphael drew His Galatea : 1 yes, th' impassioned youth Felt more than pity when he viewed her charms. Yet she (ah, strange to tell), though much he loved, Suppressed as much that sympathetic flame Which love like his should kindle: Did he kneel In rapture at her feet? she bowed the head, And coldly bade him rise; or did he plead, In terms of purest passion, for a smile? She gave him but a tear his manly form, His virtues, ev'n the courage that preserved Her life, beseemed no sentiment to wake Warmer than gratitude; and yet the love Withheld from him she freely gave his scenes; On all their charms a just applause bestowed; And, if she e'er was happy, only then When wandering where those charms were most dis

THE BOWER OF FLORA.

[played.

As thro' a neighb'ring grove, where ancient beech Their awful foliage flung, Alcander led

The pensive maid along, 'Tell me,' she cried,
Why, on these forest features all intent,
Forbears my friend some scene distinct to give
To Flora and her fragrance? Well I know
That in the general landscape's broad expanse
Their little blooms are lost; but here are glades,
Circled with shade, yet pervious to the sun,
Where, if enamelled with their rainbow hues,
The eye would catch their splendor: turn thy taste,
Even in this grassy circle where we stand,

To form their plots; there weave a woodbine bower,
And call that bower Nerina's.' At the word
Alcander smiled; his fancy instant formed
The fragrant scene she wished; and Love, with Art
Uniting, soon produced the finished whole.

Raphael, when painting his celebrated Galatea, tells Count Castiglione, in a letter, that essendo carestia di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che viene alla mente.'

DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE OF THE FLORAL BOWER.

Down to the south the glade by Nature leaned; Art formed the slope still softer, opening there Its foliage, and to each Etesian gale Admittance free dispensing; thickest shade Guarded the rest. His taste will best conceive The new arrangement, whose free footsteps, used To forest haunts, have pierced their opening dells, Where frequent tufts of sweetbrier, box, or thorn, Steal on the green sward, but admit fair space For many a mossy maze to wind between. So here did Art arrange her flowery groups Irregular, yet not in patches quaint, But interposed, between the wandering lines Of shaven turf which twisted to the pathGravel, or sand, that in as wild a wave Stole round the verdant limits of the scene; Leading the eye to many a sculptured bust, On shapely pedestal, of sage, or bard, Bright heirs of fame, who, living, loved the haunts So fragrant, so sequestered. Many an urn There too had place, with votive lay inscribed To Freedom, Friendship, Solitude, or Love.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOWER OF FLORA. A CONSERVATORY AND HOT-HOUSE.

And now each flower that bears transplanting
Or blooms indigenous, adorned the scene: [change,
Only Nerina's wish, her woodbine bower,
Remained to crown the whole. Here, far beyond
That humble wish, her lover's genius formed
A glittering fane, where rare and alien plants
Might safely flourish; where the citron sweet,
And fragrant orange, rich in fruit and flowers,
Might hang their silver stars, their golden globes,
On the same odorous stem: yet scorning there
The glassy penthouse of ignoble form,
High on Ionic shafts he bade it tower
A proud rotunda; to its sides conjoined
Two broad piazzas in theatric curve,
Ending in equal porticos sublime.

Glass roofed the whole, and sidelong to the south
"Twixt every fluted column lightly reared
Its wall pellucid. All within was day,
Was genial Summer's day, for secret stoves
Through all the pile solstitial warmth conveyed.

These led through isles of fragrance to the dome,
Each way in circling quadrant. That bright space
Guarded the spicy tribes from Afric's shore,
Or Ind, or Araby, Sabæan plants
Weeping with nard, and balsam.

THE STATUE OF FLORA.

In the midst

A statue stood, the work of Attic art;
Its thin light drapery, cast in fluid folds,
Proclaimed its ancientry; all save the head,
Which stole (for love is prone to gentle thefts)
The features of Nerina; yet that head,
So perfect in resemblance as its air
So tenderly impassioned; to the trunk,

Which Grecian skill had formed, so aptly joined,
Phidias himself might seem to have inspired
The chisel, bribed to do the amorous fraud.
One graceful hand held forth a flowery wreath,
The other pressed her zone; while round the base
Dolphins, and Triton shells, and plants marine,
Proclaimed that Venus, rising from the sea,
Had veiled in Flora's modest vest her charms.

THE STORY OF NERINA.

Such was the fane, and such the deity
Who seemed, with smile auspicious, to inhale
That incense which a tributary world,
From all its regions, round her altar breathed :
And yet, when to the shrine Alcander led
His living goddess, only with a sigh,
And starting tear, the statue and the dome
Reluctantly she viewed. And why,' she cried,
'Why would my best preserver here erect,
With all the fond idolatry of love,

A wretch's image whom his pride should scorn
(For so his country bids him)? Drive me hence,
Transport me quick to Gallia's hostile shore,
Hostile to thee, yet not, alas! to her,
Who there was meant to sojourn there, perchance,
My father, wafted by more prosperous gales,
Now mourns his daughter lost; my brother there
Perhaps now soothes that venerable age [chance
He should not soothe alone. Vain thought! per-
Both perished at Esopus-do not blush,
It was not thou that lit the ruthless flame;
It was not thou, that, like remorseless Cain,
Thirsted for brother's blood: thy heart disdains
The savage imputation. Rest thee there,
And, though thou pitiest, yet forbear to grace
A wretched alien, and a rebel deemed,
With honors ill-beseeming her to claim.

My wish, thou know'st, was humble as my state;
I only begged a little woodbine bower,
Where I might sit and weep, while all around
The lilies and the blue-bells hung their heads
In seeming sympathy.' 'Does, then, the scene
Displease?' the disappointed lover cried ;
'Alas! too much it pleases,' sighed the fair :
'Too strongly paints the passion which stern fate
Forbids me to return.' 'Dost thou, then, love
Some happier youth?' 'No, tell thy generous soul
Indeed I do not.' More she would have said,
But gushing grief prevented. From the fane
Silent he led her; as from Eden's bower
The sire of men his weeping partner led,
Less lovely, and less innocent, than she.

Yet still Alcander hoped what last she sighed
Spoke more than gratitude; the war might end;
Her father might consent; for that alone
Now seemed the duteous barrier to his bliss.
Already had he sent a faithful friend

To learn if France the reverend exile held:
That friend returned not. Meanwhile every sun
Which now (a year elapsed) diurnal rose

Beheld her still more pensive; inward pangs,
From grief's concealment, hourly seemed to force
Health from her cheek, and quiet from her soul.
Alcander mourned the change, yet still he hoped ;
For Love to Hope his flickering taper lends,
When Reason with his steady torch retires:
Hence did he try, by ever-varying arts,
And scenes of novel charm, her grief to calm.
Nor did he not employ the siren powers
Of Music and of Song; or Painting, thine,
Sweet source of pure delight! But I record
Those arts alone which form my sylvan theme.

At stated hours, full oft had he observed, She fed with welcome grain the household fowl That trespassed on his lawn; this waked a wish To give her feathered favorites space of land, And lake appropriate in a neighboring copse He planned the scene; for there the crystal spring, That formed his river, from a rocky cleft First bubbling, broke to day; and spreading there Slept on its rushes. 'Here my delving hinds,' He cried, shall soon the marshy soil remove, And spread, in brief extent, a glittering lake, Checkered with isles of verdure; on yon rock A sculptured river-god shall rest his urn; And through that urn the native fountain flow. Thy wished-for bower, Nerina, shall adorn The southern bank; the downy race, that swim The lake, or pace the shore, with livelier charms, Yet no less rural, here will meet thy glance, Than flowers inanimate.' Full soon was scooped The watery bed, and soon, by margin green, And rising banks, enclosed; the highest gave Site to a rustic fabric, shelving deep Within the thicket, and in front composed Of three unequal arches, lowly all, The surer to expel the noontide glare, Yet yielding liberal inlet to the scene; Woodbine with jasmine carelessly entwined Concealed the needful masonry, and hung In free festoons, and vested all the cell. Hence did the lake, the islands, and the rock, A living landscape spread; the feathered fleet, Led by two mantling swans, at every creek Now touched, and now unmoored; now on full sail, With pennons spread and oary feet they plied Their vagrant voyage; and now, as if becalmed, "Tween shore and shore at anchor seemed to sleep. Around those shores the fowl that fear the stream At random rove hither hot Guinea sends Her gadding troop; here, midst his speckled dames, The pigmy Chanticleer of bantam winds His clarion; while, supreme in glittering state, The peacock spreads his rainbow train, with eyes Of sapphire bright, irradiate each with gold. Meanwhile from every spray the ringdoves coo,