describe the walks, I should only say that they were
contrived, as all walks ought to be, to let in the sun or to shut him out
by turns. Here you rejoice in the fulness of his meridian strength, and
here in the shadows of various depth and intensity, which a well disposed
and happily contrasted sylvan population knows how to effect. The
senatorial oak, the spreading sycamore, the beautiful plane, (which I
never see without recollecting the channel of the Asopus and the woody
sides of Oeta,) the aristocratic pine running up in solitary stateliness
till it equal the castle turrets--all these, and many more, are admirably
intermingled and contrasted, in plantations which establish, as every
thing in and about the castle does, the consummate taste of the late
earl, although it must be admitted he had the finest subjects to work
upon, from the happy disposition of the ground. I shall never forget the
first time I walked over them; a pheasant occasionally shifting his
quarters at my intrusion, and making his noisy way through an ether so
clear, so pure, so motionless, that the broad leaves subsided, rather
than fell to the ground, without the least disturbance; the tall grey
chimneys just breathing their smoke upon the blue element, which they
scarcely stained; every green thing was beginning to wear the colour of
decay, and many a tint of yellow, deepening into orange, made me sensible
that "there be tongues in trees," if not "good in every thing." But
Montaigne says nothing is useless, _not even inutility itself_.

STANZA XIII.

This superb work of antiquity must indeed be seen, to be sufficiently
estimated: the great failure of that branch of the fine arts which is
employed to represent all the rest, is in the inadequate idea of size
which it must necessarily give where the objects to be represented are
large.

The marble vases now extant are, of course, comparatively few in number,
and this is, perhaps, excepting the Medicean, the finest of them all. The
best representations of it are those in Piranesi, three in number. One
great, and conspicuous beauty of this vase consists in the elegantly
formed handles, and in the artful insertion of the extreme branches of
the vine-stems which compose them, into its margin, where they throw off
a rich embroidery of leaves and fruit. A lion's skin, with the head and
claws attached, form a sort of drapery, and the introduction of the
thyrsus, the lituus, and three bacchanalian masks