s not a little delighted; and as you had
been a visiter at Lowther, I could not help wishing you were with me.
And now I am brought to the sentiment which occasioned this detail; I
may say, brought back to my subject, which is this,--that all just and
solid pleasure in natural objects rests upon two pillars, God and Man.
Laying out grounds, as it is called, may be considered as a liberal art,
in some sort like poetry and painting; and its object, like that of all
the liberal arts, is, or ought to be, to move the affections under the
controul of good sense; that is, those of the best and wisest: but,
speaking with more precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the
affections, and, surely, as I have said, the affections of those who
have the deepest perception of the beauty of Nature; who have the most
valuable feelings, that is, the most permanent, the most independent,
the most ennobling, connected with Nature and human life. No liberal art
aims merely at the gratification of an individual or a class: the
painter or poet is degraded in proportion as he does so; the true
servants of the Arts pay homage to the human kind as impersonated in
unwarped and enlightened minds. If this be so when we are merely putting
together words or colours, how much more ought the feeling to prevail
when we are in the midst of the realities of things; of the beauty and
harmony, of the joy and happiness of living creatures; of men and
children, of birds and beasts, of hills and streams, and trees and
flowers; with the changes of night and day, evening and morning, summer
and winter; and all their unwearied actions and energies, as benign in
the spirit that animates them as they are beautiful and grand in that
form and clothing which is given to them for the delight of our senses!
But I must stop, for you feel these things as deeply as I; more deeply,
if it were only for this, that you have lived longer. What then shall we
say of many great mansions with their unqualified expulsion of human
creatures from their neighbourhood, happy or not; houses, which do what
is fabled of the upas tree, that they breathe out death and desolation!
I know you will feel with me here, both as a man and a lover and
professor of the arts. I was glad to hear from Lady Beaumont that you
did not think of removing your village. Of course much here will depend
upon circumstances, above all, with what kind of inhabitants, from the
nature of the employments in that distr