ly, who gave to the public
the most elegant and tasteful discussion of artificial scenery that was
perhaps ever written.

Shenstone studied, as much as so indolent a man ever could, at Pembroke
College, Oxford. His parents died when he was young, leaving to him a
very considerable estate, which fortunately some relative administered
for him, until, owing to this supervisor's death, it lapsed into the
poet's improvident hands. Even then a sensible tenant of his own name,
and a distant relative, managed very snugly the farm of Leasowes; but
when Shenstone came to live with him, neither house nor grounds were
large enough for the joint occupancy of the poet, who was trailing his
walks through the middle of the mowing, and of the tenant, who had his
beeves to fatten and his rental to pay.

So Shenstone became a farmer on his own account; and, according to all
reports, a very sorry account he made of it. The good soul had none of
Mr. Tull's petulance and audacity with his servants; if the ploughman
broke his gear, I suspect the kind ballad-master allowed him a holiday
for the mending. The herdsman stared in astonishment to find the
"beasts" ordered away from their accustomed grazing-fields. A new
thicket had been planted, which must not be disturbed; the orchard was
uprooted to give place to some parterre; a fine bit of meadow was flowed
with a miniature lake; hedges were shorn away without mercy; arbors,
grottos, rustic seats, Arcadian temples, sprang up in all outlying
nooks; so that the annual product of the land came presently to be
limited, almost entirely, to the beauty of its disposition.

I think that the poet, unlike most, was never very thoroughly satisfied
with his poems, and that, therefore, the vanity possessed him to vest
the sense of beauty which he felt tingling in his blood in something
more palpable than language. Hence came the charming walks and woods and
waters of Leasowes. With this ambition holding him and mastering him,
what mattered a mouldy grain-crop, or a debt? If he had only an ardent
admirer of his walks, his wilderness, his grottos,--this was his
customer. He longed for such, in troops,--as a poet longs for readers,
and as a farmer longs for sun and rain.

And he had them. I fancy there was hardly a cultivated person in
England, but, before the death of Shenstone, had heard of the rare
beauty of his home of Leasowes. Lord Lyttleton, who lived near by, at
the elegant seat of Hagley, brought