the natural surface of the ground; not to remove its unevenness and subdue it to a plain, but to heighten the native character of the scene by filling up rough hollows, removing unsightly hills and ridges, and bringing all the parts into easy connexion and full harmony with each other. Where the ground is impracticable for improvement, the various accessaries in which landscape gardening abounds may be easily thrown in, to soften abruptness, and melt down the discordant elements of the scene. With such means as this, the level surface, which is the most difficult of all others to manage, can be made to have the appearance of variety, without forcing nature by creating artificial hills and hollows, which would betray, by their embarrassed aspect, that they have no business there. Walks and avenues should be made in accordance with the surface. On a level surface the approach to the mansion need not be direct and formal. Some variety may be given by a graceful sweep, which will carry its own explanation to the eye; and those which run through the different portions of the estate should be rough or smooth, careless or labored, according to the scene through which they go.

There are many excellent suggestions for the treatment of water in landscape gardening; and, as ours is a land of rivers and fountains, where there are few estates of any extent, without a stream running through them, or so near, that a supply of water is at hand, such directions are greatly needed; since the improver is too apt to begin with artificial forms, and in the creation of them he effaces those natural features, which afterwards he would give much to restore. The straight watercourses and circular ponds, which he parades so ambitiously, as his taste grows more correct become wearisome to the eye. For a time he suspects all parts of the scenery, rather than his own expensive efforts; but at last the conviction forces itself upon him, that all he has been doing would have been better left undone. The streamlet should be suffered to wander, or, at least, seem to wander, at its own sweet will. The cascades and waterfalls should appear, as if the hand of nature formed whatever masonry may be hidden below. The sheets of water should not bear the marks of mathematical calculation; but the shores should have natural bays and indentations, and patches of verdure should occasionally overhang the edge.

We cannot follow the author through his remarks on the embellishments, which landscape gardening either admits or requires. They are sensible and well expressed, and will leave no apology, and perhaps no taste, for those costly enormities by which many ambitious places are disfigured. Jets and fountains perhaps will not be common, though in proper situations they are eminently beautiful and refreshing in the summer day; but rustic summer-houses, bridges, seats, and arbors, will everywhere be in request. There is no landscape in the country where they will not be an appropriate ornament, and the ease with which they are constructed places them in every man's reach. There is no greater public benefactor, than those who bring such indulgences home to the poor. They have taste, as well as the rich; and it is well for all that they should share in the power to indulge it.

We dismiss these works with much respect for the taste and judgment of the author, and with full confidence, that they will exert a commanding influence. For this purpose our recommendation shall not be wanting. They are valuable and instructive; and every man of taste, though he may not need, will do well to possess them.

ε. A. Grattan,

ART. II.1. Sketches Abroad and Rhapsodies at Home. By a Veteran Traveller.

1836.

2 vols. 8vo. London.

2. At Home and Abroad. By RODERICK O'FLANAGAN. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1836.

3. Pictures of Life at Home and Abroad. By the Author of Tremaine. 2 vols. 1838.

4. Sketches at Home and Abroad. By Mrs. JAMESON. 2 vols. 1839.

ONE of the chief advantages of the late Ashburton treaty, that great healing measure between England and this country, is the liberty which it has given to the expression of international opinion. This is quite as important in a moral sense, as

freedom of trade could be in a commercial one. While chances of a rupture existed, we were, on both sides of the ocean, obliged to maintain a strict conventional reserve, a kind of armed neutrality, as regarded our reciprocal views of our relative social systems. We were compelled to submit to the cruel privation of not speaking either well or ill of our neighbours, for such now are England and America to all intents and purposes. Blame would have been ascribed to prejudice. Praise would have been called truckling. We could neither find fault nor give approval. Forbearance became, more than ever, one of the decencies of life. Thus many of the follies of both the Old World and the New for a long time escaped whipping; while their respective merits were "unhonored and unsung." With the exception of one or two catch-penny productions, poetry and prose were doomed alike to silence. No ungenerous pasquinade or stilted panegyric was published, from any source worthy of even a passing notice. We, among the host of periodical writers, have been forced to lay aside many papers on British topics until now that the happy consummation of our longcherished hopes allows us to speak out, in all the cordiality of friendly intercourse.

We are no longer restrained by delicacy, or the fear of misapprehension, from opening the sluices of censure, or pouring forth the streams of eulogy. An equalization of the currency, to use a popular illustration, has taken place. England may now, without wounding our sensitiveness or raising our ire, read us lessons on conduct, criticize our institutions, quiz our manners, expose our errors, play the Dickens with us, in short; while we, on the other hand, may freely give the " retort, courteous or uncourteous as taste may dictate, and unhesitatingly enter on a task, which a few months ago we should have shrunk from undertaking at all.

With this brief preface we offer the following observations to our readers. To English and Americans both, as far as our circulation extends, they will display a state of society of a very peculiar and curious construction, widely different from that which prevails in the United Kingdom or the United States; one which leads foreigners, unacquainted with England, to most erroneous and unjust conclusions; one which it behoves travellers in Europe to examine and under

stand; at least all who share with us in that respect and regard for the English character, that is inherent in the race from which we have all sprung, and that inspires us with a deep interest in the honor of our common stock. We trust, however, that, as the truth of our remarks cannot be questioned, their spirit may not be mistaken; and that, received wherever they may be, they will be taken in good part. It may be necessary to remark, that on the continent of Europe all British subjects, no matter from what part of the empire they come, are confounded in the general term English; and in this sense we have used it. On the other hand, the English people apply the word abroad in common parlance as we do in this article, to the continent of Europe alone.

Few phrases are better calculated to excite a searching inquiry into cause and effect than the hackneyed one "at Home and Abroad." Yet the illogical profusion with which it has been applied and commented on in England for the last twenty years has not led to results of a value at all corresponding to the interests and the feelings involved in it. The scattered remarks of tourists and essayists, on the state of English society and the aspect of English character on the continent, have been most contradictory; and, even when correct and to the point, the want of condensation renders them of little worth. But were some ingenious compiler to select from the records of modern travellers, the passages which bear on the subject, we venture to say that a volume might be produced, which would deeply shock the pride that Englishmen are so fond of calling national. Facts are stubborn things; and with a host of them bearing on one point, and a vast number of concurrent authorities, it is impossible for the candid and truth-loving part of a nation to resist their evidence. And, as the English abroad derive many of their peculiarities from their previous condition at home, we will briefly and cautiously consider what manner of persons, while in England, those are, relative to whom, after they remove themselves to the Continent, we intend to say so much.

A country containing in round numbers 25,000,000 of inhabitants, 45,000,000 of acres of cultivated land, a grand total of capital represented by all the property of Great Britain and Ireland estimated at £4,000,000,000; paying annual interest on the public debt to the amount of

£28,000,000, with a disposable revenue of £26,000,000 more; exporting annually produce and manufactures to the value of between 40 and 50 millions sterling, and such a country, if there be any truth in figures, is the United Kingdom, forms a field of vast dimensions for the exercise of speculative philosophy. The benefits and the abuses of power, the useful or baneful effects of wealth, the influence of rank, the results of industry, civilization, in fact, on a great scale of experiment, had never yet so many elements combined so advantageously for a fair and infallible testing of its merits and its faults. The insular situation of the country, protecting it from the contagion of foreign vices; its great commercial relations with the rest of the world, facilitating the introduction of all foreign improvements; a form of government universally admitted to be well adapted for their developement; perfect freedom for religious thought; a wide latitude for political action; a boundless range for every theory of morals, such are the advantages of the British empire, towards the establishment of a social system, which, like the political constitution of the country, though not written down into a formal code, ought to present a whole of practical wisdom and virtue, for the people's pride and the world's example. It is not our intention to enter into the inquiry as to whether the result has or has not been attained. It would be indeed an extensive treatise that could embrace an analysis of the social system of England. Neither shall we examine at large the theories of the causes in which national character has its rise.

We therefore take the English character as we find it, whether creating, or arising out of, the institutions with which it is identified and coeval. The fluctuations which both have undergone for centuries, have nothing to do with our present inquiry. It is their actual and living aspect with which we have to deal. That the frame-work of society in England presents many points of weakness needs no demonstration to those who have impartially compared it with that of other countries. Nor does this by any means imply that imperfections" abroad" may not form counterparts to those (speaking in the English sense)" at home." But it is positively true, that, with many advantages superior to those of other countries, and those chiefly depending on a greater degree of wealth, the errors in the plan of social polity estab