When I read such a book as this of Whately's -so informed and leavened as it is by an elegant taste-I am most painfully impressed by the shortcomings of very much which is called good landscape-gardening with us. As if serpentine walks, and glimpses of elaborated turfground, and dots of exotic evergreens in little circlets of spaded earth, compassed at all those broad effects which a good designer should keep in mind! We are gorged with petit-maitreism, and pretty littlenesses of all kinds. We have the daintiest of walks and the rarest of shrubs, and the best of drainage; but of those grand, bold effects which at once seize upon the imagination and inspire it with new worship of Nature, we have great lack. In private grounds we cannot of course command the opportunity which the long tenure under British privilege gives; but the conservators of public paths have scope and verge; let them look to it that their resources be not wasted in the niceties of mere gardening, or in elaborate architectural devices. Banks of blossoming shrubs and tangled wild vines and labyrinthine walks will count for nothing in park-effect, when, fifty years hence, the scheme shall have ripened, and hoary pines pile along the ridges, and gaunt single trees spot here and there the glades, to invite the noontide wayfarer. A true artist should keep these ultimate effects always in his eye-effects that may be greatly impaired, if not utterly sacrificed, by an injudicious multiplication of small and meretricious beauties, which in no way conspire to the grand and final poise of the scene.

But I must not dwell on so enticing a topic, or my wet day will run over into sunshine. One word more, however, I have to say of the personality of the author who has suggested it. The reader of Spark's Works and Life of Franklin may remember that, in the fourth volume, under the head of "Hutchinson's Letters," the Doctor details difficulties which he fell into in conuection with "certain papers" he obtained indirectly from one of His Majesty's officials, and communicated to Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the House of Representatives of

it between a certain William Whately and Mr. Temple. This William Whately was the brother of Thomas Whately, the author in question, and secretary to Lord Grenville,* in which capacity he died in 1772.† The "papers" alluded to were letters from Governor Hutchinson and others, expressing sympathy with the British Ministry in their efforts to enforce a grievous Colonial taxation. It was currently supposed that Mr. Secretary Whately was the recipient of these letters; and upon their being made public after his death, Mr. Whately, his brother and executor, conceived that Mr. Temple was the instrument of their transfer. Hence the duel. Dr. Franklin, however, by public letter, declared that this allegation was ill

the party to whom he was indebted. The doctor lost his place of Postmaster-General for the Colonies, and was egregiously insulted by Wedderburn in open Council; but he could console himself with the friendship of such men as Lawyer Dunning (one of the suspected authors of "Junius") and with the eulogium of Lord Chatham.

There are three more names belonging to this period which I shall bring under review to finish up my day. These are Horace Walpole (Lord Orford), Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith. Walpole was the proprietor of Strawberry Hill, and wrote upon Gardening. Burke was the owner of a noble farm at Beaconsfield, which he managed with rare sagacity. Goldsmith could never claim land enough to dig a grave upon, until the day he was buried; but he wrote the story of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and the sweet poem of "The Deserted Village."

I take a huge pleasure in dipping from time to time into the books of Horace Walpole, and an almost equal pleasure in cherishing a hearty contempt for the man. With a certain native cleverness, and the tact of a showman, he paraded his resources, whether of garden, or villa, or memory, or ingenuity, so as to carry a reputation for ability that he never has deserved. His money and the distinction of his father gave him an association with cultivated peopleartists, politicians, poets-which the metal of his own mind would never have found by reason of its own gravitating power. He courted notoriety in a way that would have made him, if a poorer man, the toadying Boswell of some other Johnson giant, and if very poor, the welcome buffoon of some gossiping journal, who would never weary of contortions, and who would brutify himself at the death, to kindle an admiring smile. He writes pleasantly about painters, and condescendingly about gardeners

* I find him named, in Dodsley's "Annual Register" for 1771, "Keeper of His Majesty's Private Roads." Loudon makes an error in giving 1780 as the year of his death.

and gardening. Of the special beauties of Strawberry Hill he is himself historiographer; elaborate copper-plates, elegant paper, and a particularity that is ludicrous, set forth the charms of a villa which never supplied a single incentive to correct taste, or a single scene that has the embalmment of genius. He tells us grandly how this room was hung with crimson, and that other with gold; how "the tea-room was adorned with green paper and prints . . . on the hearth, a large green vase of German ware, with a spread-eagle, and lizards for handles" which vase (if the observation be not counted disloyal by sensitive gentlemen) must have been a very absurd bit of pottery. "On a shelf and brackets are two potpourris of Hankin china; two pierced blue and white basons of old Delft; and two sceaus [sic] of coloured Sevre; a blue and white vase and cover; and two old Fayence bottles."

When a man writes about his own furniture in this style for large type and quarto, we pity him more than if he had kept to such fantastic nightmares as the "Castle of Otranto." The Earl of Orford speaks in high terms of the literary abilities of the Earl of Bath: have any of my readers ever chanced to see any literary work of the Earl of Bath? If not, I will supply the omission, in the shape of a ballad, "to the tune of a former song by George Bubb Doddington." It is entitled "Strawberry

Hill."

"Some cry up Gunnersbury,

For Sion some declare;
And some that with Chiswick House

No villa can compare.
But ask the Beaux of Middlesex,
Who know the country well,
If Strawb'ry Hill, if Strawb'ry Hill
Don't bear away the bell?

"Since Denham sung of Cooper's
There's scarce a hill around,
But what in song or ditty

Is turned to fairy ground.

Ah, peace be with their memories!
I wish them wondrous well;
But Strawb'ry Hill, but Strawb'ry Hill
Must bear away the bell."

It is no way surprising that a noble poet capable of writing such a ballad should have admired the villa of Horace Walpole: it is no way surprising that a proprietor capable of admiring such a ballad should have printed his own glorification of Strawberry Hill.

I am not insensible to the easy grace and the piquancy of his letters; no man could ever pour more delightful twaddle into the ear of a great friend; no man could more delight in doing it, if only the friend were really great. I am aware that he was highly cultivated, that he had observed widely at home and abroad, that he was a welcome guest in distinguished circles; but he never made or had a real friend; and the news of the old man's death made no severer shock than if one of the Fayence pipkins had

broken. But what most irks me is the absurd dilettanteism and presumption of the man. He writes a tale as if he were giving dignity to romance; he applauds an artist as Dives might have thrown crumbs to Lazarus; vain to the last degree of all that he wrote or said, he was yet too fine a gentleman to be called author; if there had been a way of printing books without recourse to the vulgar media of type and papera way of which titled gentlemen could command the monopoly-I think he would have written more. As I turn over the velvetty pages of his works, and look at his catalogues, his bon-mots, his drawings, his affectations of magnificence, I seem to see the fastidious old man shuffling with gouty step up and down, from drawingroom to library-stopping here and there to admire some newly-arrived piece of potterypulling out his golden snuff-box, and whisking a delicate pinch into his old nostrils-then dusting his affluent shirt-frill with the tips of his dainty fingers, with an air of gratitude to Providence for having created so fine a gentleman as Horace Walpole, and of gratitude to Horace Walpole for having created so fine a place as Strawberry Hill.

I turn from this ancient specimen of titled elegance to a consideration of Mr. Burke, with much the same relief with which I would go out from a perfumed drawing-room into the breezy air of a June morning. Lord Kames has told us that Mr. Burke preferred oxen to horses for field-labour; and we have Burke's letters to his bailiff, showing a nice attention to the economies of farming, and a complete mastery of its working details. But more than anywhere else does his agricultural sagacity declare itself in its "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity."*

Will the reader pardon me the transcript of a passage or two? "It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the farmer. The farmer's capital (except in a few persons, and in a very few places) is far more feeble than is commonly imagined. The trade is a very poor trade; it is subject to great risks and losses. The capital, such as it is, is turned but once in the year; in some branches it require three years before the money is paid; I believe never less than three in the turnip and grass-land course. . .... It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, counting the value of his quick and dead stock, the interest of the money he turns, together with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer ever does make twelve or fifteen per cent. by the year on his capital. In most parts of England which have fallen within my observation, I have rarely known a farmer who to his own trade has not added some other employment or traffic, that, after a course of the most unremitting parsimony and labour, and persevering in his business for a long course of years, died worth more than paid his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in nearly the same equal conflict between industry and want in

* Presented to William Pitt, 1795.

which the last predecessor, and a long line of predecessors before him, lived and died."

In confirmation of this last statement, I may mention that Samuel Ireland, writing in 1792 ("Picturesque Views on the River Thames"), speaks of a farmer named Wapshote, near Chertsey, whose ancestors had resided on the place ever since the time of Alfred the Great; and amid all the chances and changes of centuries, not one of the descendants had either bettered or marred his fortunes. The truthfulness of the story is confirmed in a number of the "Monthly Review" for the same year.

Mr. Burke commends the excellent and most useful works of his "friend Arthur Young" (of whom I shall have somewhat to say another time), but regrets that he should intimate the largeness of a farmer's profits. He discusses the drill-culture (for wheat), which, he says, is well, provided" the soil is not excessively heavy, or encumbered with large loose stones, and provided most vigilant superintendence, the most prompt activity, which has no such day as to-morrow in its calendar, combine to speed the plough; in this case I admit," he says, "its superiority over the old and general methods." And again he says--"It requires ten times more of labour, of vigilance, of attention, of skill, and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a farmer with success, than what belongs to any other trade."

May not "A Farmer" take a little pride in such testimony as this?

One of his biographers tells us, that, in his later years, the neighbours saw him on one occasion, at his home of Beaconsfield, leaning upon the shoulder of a favourite old horse (which had the privilege of the lawn), and sobbing. Whereupon the gossiping villagers reported the great man crazed. Ay, crazed, broken by the memory of his only and lost son Richard, with whom this aged saddle-horse had been a special favourite,-crazed, no doubt, at thought of the strong young hand whose touch the old beast waited for in vain,-crazed and broken,—an oak, ruined and blasted by storms. The great mind in this man was married to a great heart.

It is almost with a feeling of awe that I enter upon my wet-day studies the name of Oliver Goldsmith: I love so much his tender story of the good vicar; I love so much his poems. The world is accustomed to regard that little novel, which Dr. Johnson bargained away for sixty guineas, as a rural tale: it is so quiet; it is so simple; its atmosphere is altogether so redolent of the country. And yet all, save some few critical readers, will be surprised to learn that there is not a picture of natural scenery in the book of any length; and wherever an allusion of the kind appears, it does not bear the impress of a mind familiar with the country, and practically at home there. The Doctor

* At that day, horse-hoeing, at regular intervals, was understood to form part of what was counted

drill-culture.

used to go out upon the Edgware road,-not for his love of trees, but to escape noise and duns. Yet we overlook literalness, charmed as we are by the development of his characters and by the sweet burden of his story. The statement may seem extraordinary, but I could transcribe every rural, out-of-door scene in the "Vicar of Wakefield" upon a single half-page of foolscap. Of the first home of the Vicar we have only this account:-"We had an elegant house, situated in a fine country and a good neighbourhood." Of his second home there this more full description :-" Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before: on one side a meadow, on the other a green. My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given a hundred pounds for my predecessor's good-will. Nothing could exceed the neatness of my little inclosures: the elms and hedge-rows appearing with inexpressible beauty. My house consisted of but one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness." It is quite certain that an author familiar with the country, and with a memory stocked with a multitude of kindred scenes, would have given a more determinate outline to this picture. But whether he would have given to his definite outline the fascination that belongs to the vagueness of Goldsmith, is wholly another question.

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"Our

called upon to assist the Vicar and his family in Again, in the sixth chapter, Mr. Burchell is saving an after-growth of hay." labours," he says, "went on lightly; we turned the swath to the wind." It is plain that Goldto the wind may be a good way of making it, smith never saved much hay; turning a swath but it is a slow way of gathering it. In the eighth chapter of this charming story the doctor says:-"Our family dined in the field, and we sat, or rather reclined, round a temperate repast, our cloth spread upon the hay. To answered each other from opposite hedges, the heighten our satisfaction, the blackbirds familiar redbreast came and pecked the crumbs from our hands, and every sound seemed but the echo of tranquility."

This is very fascinating; but it is the veriest romanticism of country - life. Such sensible girls as Olivia and Sophia would, I am quite sure, never have spread the dinner-cloth upon hay, which would most surely have set all the gravy aflow, if the platters had not been fairly overturned; and as for the red breats, (with that rollicking boy Moses in my mind) I think they must have been terribly tame birds.

a

But this is only a farmer's criticism Crispin feeling the bunions on some Phidian statue. And do I think the less of Goldsmith because he wantoned with the literalism of the country, and laid on his prismatic colours of romance where only white light lay? Not one discard whit. It only shows how genius may utter faithfulness to detail if only its song is

charged with a general simplicity and truthfulness that fill our ears and our hearts.

As for Goldsmith's verse, who does not love it? It is wicked to consume the pages of a magazine with extracts from a poem that is our daily food, else I would string them all down his column and the next, and every one should have a breezy reminder of the country in it. Not all the arts of all the modernists,-not "Maud," with its garden-song-not the caged birds of Killingworth, singing up and down the

village street not the heather-bells out of which the springy step of Jean Ingelow crushes perfume-shall make me forget the old, sweet, even flow of the "Deserted Village."

Down with it, my boy, from the third shelf! G-O-L-D-S-M-I-T-H-a worker in gold-is on the back. And I sit reading it to myself as a fog comes weltering in from the sea, covering all the landscape, save some half-dozen of the city spires, which peer above the drift-like beacons.

"The eye which cannot bear light, must be in a very inflamed condition, Edward." The voice was gentle, but full of grief. "Without light, a man gropes blindly. Danger and destruction are in his way. If he have a true friend, will not that friend seek to guide his steps? Nay, even though he strike at him in his wilfulness and passion?"

"Your imagination is at fault, mother. You Conjure up frightful images, and are terrified at them. I am not walking blindly. But, suppose I am, and should stumble and fall; the hurt will be mine alone."

"Yours alone! Oh, Edward-my son !" The eyes turned upon him were so full of tender anguish, that he gazed into them with half wondering awe. There gleamed upon him at the instant a new revelation; and he perceived something of the quality of a mother's love.

"But I shall neither stumble nor fall," he made answer, in an altered tone, and with a gentle manner.

"If we walk in the paths of honour and usefulness, God will keep our feet; but, if we stray from them, evil spirits have power to build obstructions, to dig pit-falls, and to lay snares. I am not using a mere figure of speech, my son, but declaring a solemn truth."

Edward stood still, but did not reply. "Let me say just one thing more, my son," added his mother, "and I want you to take the

thought with you and dwell upon it. The satisfaction of mind gained by resisting and overcoming is always greater than what is gained by yielding, in temptation. And we are tempted by evil spirits, who hate us and seek to destroy in us all good, so that we may become like unto themselves, whenever we seek to gain an advantage for ourslves at the expense of others, or when impure desires or wicked passions clamor for indulgence. In yielding, we curse ourselves; in resisting effectually, we secure peace and safety."

Rising, as she finished the last sentence, his mother left the room. The irritation felt by Edward, when she began talking to him, had entirely passed away, and he was in a more subdued and rational state of mind. The truth just declared, that a higher and purer pleasure is always gained by overcoming a temptation than in yielding to it, struck his mind very forcibly, and dwelt in his thoughts.

"Pleasure, or satisfaction of mind, is the end we all have in view." So Edward Wilmot thought with himself, for he was not then capable of thinking higher; "and we call men fools who do what is sure to disappoint the heart's desire. Good at the expense of others, and the indulgence of bad passions-these the Christian moralist condemns, and tells us they will surely bring sorrow and pain. And, maybe he is right. Nay-doubtless is right."

The young man had stood where his mother left him, as he thus mused with himself. Now he started forward, and with considerable excitement of manner, exclaimed

66

What fools we are! We see the right, and while approving, rush madly into the wrong." A servant opened the door, and said— "Mr. Freeman has called to see you."

66

Very well. I'll be down in a moment." As the servant withdrew, Wilmot clinched his hands violently. His face darkened, as he mut

tered in an undertone, bitterly, "Any one but him just now! Has the devil sent him?" After a pause, he added, taking a deep breath"I believe so, verily. Of one thing I may at least be certain, no good angel prompted his visit just at this time."

A polished, soft spoken, insinuating person was Mr. Freeman, with the gentle purr of a cat. He was always the disinterested friend; never the seeker of favours or benefits. Had made himself rich without the life-wearing toil of the merchant and manufacturer, or the brain-exhausting work of professional life. Shrewd, keen, wide awake and unscrupulous, he knew just when and where to put in his hand and reap the harvests that other men planted. He knew just how to make men work for him, when they imagined that they were working for themselves. Always managed to get the chestnuts, To young Wilmot he had taken quite a fancy. There were qualities in him that might be used to advantage. had studied him carefully, and had drawn him just a little aside into a dangerous way, noting all the while how he regarded his steps, and how his moral sense was touched. "After my own heart!" This sentence gave his estimate of

but never the burnt paws.

Edward Wilmot.

He

"Ah, my friend! How are you to-day?" With a cheery voice, and a grasp of the hand, he met the young man, who had wished him anywhere else but there.

"Feeling rather dull," was Edward's constrained answer.

Freeman smiled his sunniest smile. He had faith in his countenance, and believed that no eyes were keen enough to look through any veil he might draw over it-and he had special faith in his smile. So he covered his face with sunshine.

"I don't know what men mean by the blues," he said, in his most charming way. Edward looked at him closely, and for the first time saw a curve of the lip, and a covert outlook from the eyes, that affected him unpleasantly. Just what they meant was not revealed; but he felt that they did not mean good.

"Temperaments differ," Edward replied, with

some reserve of manner.

66

A good digestion is everything, my young friend. Avoid excesses in eating and drinking, and take plenty of exercise in the open air, and you may go through life, if you will, as blithe as a lark."

too great eagerness to dispense that creates so much trouble."

"As to the gathering process," said Edward Wilmot, "it is all very well if you have anything to gather."

"There are harvest fields all around us, and grain bending to the sickle," remarked the other. "He that wills, may go in and reap."

"What other men have planted." Edward looked steadily at his companion.

reaps.

"If those who sow fail to reap, shall the grain fall and be lost?" said Freeman. "Most but neglect the harvest. Either they know not men plant well, and till their ground diligently, the signs of ripening, or are away at gathering coming true, that one man sows and another time clearing new fields. And thus it is always who gathers the corn, if it go not to his garWhat matters it to him that planteth If we work for the ingathering of harvests, ners? It might as well be in mine or in yours. down the game that has escaped another's gun, shall we not have our reward? If I can bring shall it not be mine in right and houour? Verily, I cannot see it differently. But come, my horses are ready by this time. A drive into the country, and the medicine of change, will give a healthier tone to your spirits."

They went out together and rode for a couple of hours; then returned, going to the office of Mr. Freeman. During the ride, a grand scheme for money-making, slightly hinted at before, was fully developed by Freeman. carrying it on successfully, it would be necessary for him to remain out of sight. Funds were needed to a considerable amount-these

In

he would supply. The scheme proposed was nothing less than driving an overburdened and embarrassed merchant, who had unwisely invested heavily in a mining company, into selling out his interest at a ruinous loss, which was to be their gain-for the interest was prospectively valuable. Freeman, who was personally well acquainted with the merchant, had, in an hour of friendly conference with him, learned all about his pecuniary troubles, consequent upon this mining interest, which he was anxious to hold. If forced to a sacrifice, it would be his ruin; for he was burdened with loans, which he would not ultimately be able to take up if his mining investments were lost. Such was the condition of the company in which he held these large investments, that its stock had no market value. If forced to realize upon them, he would not be able to get a tenth of what they

man."

"You learn slowly, Edward," said his tempter. "Let me repeat a lesson given you before. Always keep the means ahead of the wants. Work diligently after the supplies, and having secured these, want becomes a blessing instead of a curse. There is often quite as much pleasure in gaining as in spending-nay, more sometimes. Let things be done in their right order-first gather, and then dispense. It is the

place, and compel him to give up this interest, was the scheme proposed by Freeman, and young Wilmot was to be his instrument in doing the mean and dishonest work.

Very adroitly did Freeman keep out of view the worst features of the case. He represented the merchant's affairs as drifting by steadily moving currents towards a crisis that was inevitable. "When the wreck comes, as come it must, we will be at hand, that is all. The