pasturage, and the plow, in many parts of a country that is so well peopled, and cultivated to a far greater advantage.' But why may not a whole estate be thrown into a kind of garden by frequent plantations, that may turn as much to the profit, as the pleasure of the owner? A marsh overgrown with willows, or a mountain shaded with oaks," are not only more beautiful, but more beneficial, than when they lie bare and unadorned. Fields of corn make a pleasant prospect, and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, if the natural embroidery of the meadows were helpt and improved by some small additions of art, and the several rows of hedges set off by trees and flowers, that the soil was capable of receiving, a man might make a pretty landscape of his own possessions. b Writers, who have given us an account of China, tell us, the inhabitants of that country laugh at the plantations of our Europeans, which are lain out by the rule and line; because, they say, any one may place trees in equal rows and uniform figures. They chuse rather to shew a genius in works of this nature, and therefore always conceal the art by which they direct themselves. They have a word, it seems, in their language, by which they express the particular beauty of a plantation that thus strikes the imagination at first sight, without discovering what it is that has so agreeable an effect. Our British gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids. We see the marks of the scissars upon every plant and * Addison would seem to have anticipated Goldsmith's complaint, -The man of wealth and pride Takes up a place that many poor supplied, &c. THE DESERTED VILLAGE.-G. a Alas! we are now enamoured of exotics, and flowering shrubs.-H. from lie: it was formerly written licn.—H. bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my opinion, but, for my own part, I would rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure; and cannot but fancy that an orchard in flower looks infinitely more delightful, than all the little labyrinths of the most finished parterre. But as our great modellers of gardens have their magazines of plants to dispose of, it is very natural for them to tear up all the beautiful plantations of fruit trees, and contrive a plan that may most turn to their own profit, in taking off their evergreens, and the like moveable plants, with which their shops are plentifully stocked." 0. Our present mode of gardening seems to have been formed on the hint delivered by Mr. Addison in this paper. It has been brought to great perfection in our time; but, is now, I doubt, degenerating into an over finical and effeminate delicacy, like all our other tastes. Nature may be outraged, as well as art: and the famous aphorism of Lord Bacon-"Natura nescit modum "—would, I think, be a proper motto for some gardens of this sort, that I have seen.-H. No. 415. THURSDAY, JUNE 26. PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION. 'Of architecture, as it affects the imagination. Greatness in architecture relates either to the bulk or to the manner. Greatness of bulk in the ancient oriental buildings. The ancient accounts of these buildings confirmed, 1. From the advantages for raising such works, in the first ages of the world, and in the eastern climates. 2. From several of them which are still extant. Instances how greatness of manner affects the imagination. A French author's observations on this subject. Why concave and convex figures give a greatness of manner to works of architecture. Every thing that pleases the imagination in architecture, is either great, beautiful, or new.' Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem: Next add our cities of illustrious name, DRYDEN. HAVING already shewn how the fancy is affected by the works of nature, and afterwards considered in general both the works of nature and of art, how they mutually assist and compleat each other, in forming such scenes and prospects as are most apt to delight the mind of the beholder, I shall in this paper throw together some reflections on that particular art, which has a more immediate tendency, than any other, to produce those primary pleasures of the imagination, which have hitherto been the subject of this discourse. The art I mean is that of architecture, which I shall consider only with regard to the light in which the foregoing speculations have placed it, without entering into those rules and maxims which the great masters of architecture have laid down, and explained at large in numberless treatises upon that subject. Greatness, in the works of architecture, may be considered as relating to the bulk and body of the structure, or to the manner in which it is built. As for the first, we find the ancients, espe cially among the eastern nations of the world, infinitely superior to the moderns. Not to mention the Tower of Babel, of which an old author says, there were the foundations to be seen in his time, which looked like a spacious mountain; what could be more noble than the walls of Babylon, its hanging gardens, and its temple to Jupiter Belus, that rose a mile high by eight several stories, each story a furlong in height, and on the top of which was the Babylonian observatory? I might here, likewise, take notice of the huge rock that was cut into the figure of. Semiramis, with the smaller rocks that lay by it in the shape of tributary kings; the prodigious basin, or artificial lake, which took in the whole Euphrates, until such time as a new canal was formed for its reception, with the several trenches through which that river was conveyed. I know there are persons who look upon some of these wonders of art as fabulous, but I cannot find any grounds for such a suspicion, unless it be that we have no such works among us at present. There were, indeed, many greater advantages for building in those times, and in that part of the world, than have been met with ever since. The earth was extremely fruitful, men lived generally on pasturage, which requires a much smaller number of hands than agriculture: there were few trades to employ the busy part of mankind, and fewer arts and sciences to give work to men of speculative tempers; and what is more. than all the rest, the prince was absolute; so that when he went to war, he put himself at the head of a whole people as we find Semiramis leading her three millions to the field, and yet overpowered by the number of her enemies. It is no wonder, b Until such time as. This mode of expression was common in Mr. Addison's time, but is now out of use. We should say, more concisely,-'till, or, until a new canal, &c.-H. To give work to,-is a little hard and inelegant. He might have said, to amuse the man of speculation.-H. therefore, when she was at peace, and turned her thoughts on building, that she could accomplish so great works, with such a prodigious multitude of labourers: besides that, in her climate, there was small interruption of frosts and winters, which make the northern workmen lie half the year idle. I might mention too, among the benefits of the climate, what historians say of the earth, that it sweated out a bitumen or natural kind of mortar, which is doubtless the same with that mentioned in holy writ, as contributing to the structure of Babel. Slime they used instead of mortar.' In Egypt we still see their pyramids, which answer to the descriptions that have been made of them; and I question not but a traveller might find out some remains of the labyrinth that covered a whole province, and had a hundred temples disposed among its several quarters and divisions. The wall of China is one of these eastern pieces of magnificence, which makes a figure even in the map of the world, although an account of it would have been thought fabulous, were not the wall itself still extant. We are obliged to devotion for the noblest buildings that have adorned the several countries of the world. It is this which has set men at work on temples and public places of worship, not only that they might, by the magnificence of the building, invite the Deity to reside within it, but that such stupendous works might, at the same time, open the mind to vast conceptions, and fit it to converse with the divinity of the place. For every thing that reverence on the mind is majestic, imprints an awfulness and of the beholder, and strikes in with the natural greatness of the soul. In the second place we are to consider greatness of manner in architecture, which has such force upon the imagination, that a small building, where it appears, shall give the mind nobler ideas |