for such tributes to _Nature_ as no poet of the present day has even
approached.

His various excellence is really wonderful: architecture, painting,
_gardening_, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered,
that English _gardening_ is the purposed perfectioning of niggard
_Nature_, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch,
double-post-and-rail, Hounslow Heath and Clapham Common sort of
country, since the principal forests have been felled. It is, in
general, far from a picturesque country. The case is different with
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and I except also the lake counties and
Derbyshire, together with Eton, Windsor, and my own dear Harrow on
the Hill, and some spots near the coast. In the present rank
fertility of "great poets of the age," and "schools of poetry"--a
word which, like "schools of eloquence" and of "philosophy," is never
introduced till the decay of the art has increased with the number of
its professors--in the present day, then, there have sprung up two
sorts of Naturals;--the Lakers, who whine about Nature because they
live in Cumberland; and their _under-sect_ (which some one has
maliciously called the "Cockney School"), who are enthusiastical for
the country because they live in London. It is to be observed, that
the rustical founders are rather anxious to disclaim any connexion
with their metropolitan followers, whom they ungraciously review, and
call cockneys, atheists, foolish fellows, bad writers, and other hard
names not less ungrateful than unjust. I can understand the
pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of Windermere to what Mr. Braham
terms "_entusumusy_," for lakes, and mountains, and daffodils, and
buttercups; but I should be glad to be apprised of the foundation of
the London propensities of their imitative brethren to the same "high
argument." Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have rambled over half
Europe, and seen Nature in most of her varieties (although I think
that they have occasionally not used her very well); but what on
earth--of earth, and sea, and Nature--have the others seen? Not a
half, nor a tenth part so much as Pope. While they sneer at his
Windsor Forest, have they ever seen any thing of Windsor except its
_brick_?

The most rural of these gentlemen is my friend Leigh Hunt, who lives
at Hampstead. I believe that I need not disclaim any personal or
poetical hostility against that gentleman. A more amiable man in
society I know not; nor