m, that we must not
neglect it:--

Tout ce qu'on dit de trop est fade et rebutant;
L'esprit rassasie le rejette a l'instant,
Qui ne sait se borner, ne sut jamais ecrire.

We have a memorable instance of the inefficiency of local descriptions
in a very remarkable one by a writer of fine genius, composing with an
extreme fondness of his subject, and curiously anxious to send down to
posterity the most elaborate display of his own villa--this was the
_Laurentinum_ of Pliny. We cannot read his letter to Gallus, which the
English reader may in Melmoth's elegant version,[1] without somewhat
participating in the delight of the writer in many of its details; but
we cannot with the writer form the slightest conception of his villa,
while he is leading us over from apartment to apartment, and pointing to
us the opposite wing, with a "beyond this," and a "not far from thence,"
and "to this apartment another of the same sort," &c. Yet, still, as we
were in great want of a correct knowledge of a Roman villa, and as this
must be the most so possible, architects have frequently studied, and
the learned translated with extraordinary care, Pliny's _Description of
his Laurentinum_. It became so favourite an object, that eminent
architects have attempted to raise up this edifice once more, by giving
its plan and elevation; and this extraordinary fact is the result--that
not one of them but has given a representation different from the other!
Montfaucon, a more faithful antiquary, in his close translation of the
description of this villa, in comparing it with Felibien's plan of the
villa itself, observes, "that the architect accommodated his edifice to
his translation, but that their notions are not the same;
unquestionably," he adds, "if ten skilful translators were to perform
their task separately, there would not be one who agreed with another!"

If, then, on this subject of local descriptions, we find that it is
impossible to convey exact notions of a real existing scene, what must
we think of those which, in truth, describe scenes which have no other
existence than the confused makings-up of an author's invention; where
the more he details the more he confuses; and where the more particular
he wishes to be, the more indistinct the whole appears?

Local descriptions, after a few striking circumstances have been
selected, admit of no further detail. It is not their length, but their
happiness, which enters into our comprehensi