so comparatively indifferent is the attention of proprietors, that it becomes a duty to the country to omit no opportunity of recurring to the subject.

The only decent pretext which we hear alleged for resisting a call which is sounded from every quarter, is the selfish excuse, that the profits of plantations make a tardy and distant return. Το a person who argues in this manner it is in vain to speak of the future welfare of the country, or of the immediate benefit to the poorer inhabitants, or of the honour justly attached to the memory of an extensive improver, since he must be insensible even to the benefit which his own family must derive from the improvement recommended; we can, notwithstanding, meet him on his own ground, and affirm that the advantage to the proprietor who has planted a hundred acres begins at the very commencement of the undertaking, and may be realized whenever it is the pleasure of the proprietor that such realization shall take place. If, for example, he chooses to sell a plantation at five years old, or at an earlier period, there is little doubt that it will be accounted worth the sum which the plantation cost him, in addition to the value of the land, and also the interest upon the expense so laid out. After this period the value increases in a compound ratio: and at any period when the planter chooses to sell his property, he must and will derive an advantage from his plantations, corresponding to their state of advancement. It is true that the landed proprietor's own interest will teach him not to be too eager in

realizing the profits of his plantations, because every year that he retains them adds rapidly to their value. But still the value exists as much as that of the plate in his strong-box, and can be converted as easily into money, should he be disposed to sell the plantations which he has formed.

All this is demonstrable even to the prejudices of avarice itself, in its blindest mood; but the indifference to this great rural improvement arises, we have reason to believe, not so much out of the actual lucre of gain as the fatal vis inertia-that indolence which induces the lords of the soil to be satisfied with what they can obtain from it by immediate rent, rather than encounter the expense and trouble of attempting the modes of amelioration which require immediate expense-and, what is, perhaps, more grudged by the first-born of Egypt—a little future attention. To such we can only say, that improvement by plantation is at once the easiest, the cheapest, and the least precarious mode of increasing the immediate value, as well as the future income, of their estates, and that therefore it is we exhort them to take to heart the exhortation of the dying Scotch laird to his son :-" Be aye sticking in a tree, Jock-it will be growing whilst you are sleeping"

ARTICLE XV.

ON LANDSCAPE GARDENING.

[The Planter's Guide; or, a Practical Essay on the best Method of giving immediate effect to Wood, by the removal of large Trees and Underwood. By Sir HENRY STEUART, Bart. Edinburgh, 8vo, 1828.- Quarterly Review, March, 1828.]

THE notable paradox, that the residence of a proprietor upon his estate is of as little consequence as the bodily presence of a stockholder upon Exchange, has, we believe, been renounced. At least, as in the case of the Duchess of Suffolk's relationship to her own child, the vulgar continue to be of opinion that there is some difference in favour of the next hamlet and village, and even of the vicinage in general, when the squire spends his rents at the manor-house, instead of cutting a figure in France or Italy. A celebrated politician used to say he would willingly bring in one bill to make poaching felony, another to encourage the breed of foxes, and a third to revive the decayed amusements of cock-fighting and bull-baiting— that he would make, in short, any sacrifice to the

humours and prejudices of the country gentlemen, in their most extravagant form, providing only he could prevail upon them to " dwell in their own houses, be the patrons of their own tenantry, and the fathers of their own children." However we

might be disposed to stop short of these liberal concessions, we agree so far with the senator by whom they were enounced, as to think every thing of great consequence which furnishes an additional source of profit or of pleasure to the resident proprietor, and induces him to continue to support the useful and honourable character of a country gentleman, an epithet so pleasing in English ears,— so dear to English feelings of independence and patriotism. The manly lines of Akenside cannot fail to rush on the memory of our readers, nor was there such occasion for the reproach when it flowed from the pen of the author, as there is at this present day.

"O blind of choice, and to yourselves untrue!

The young grove shoots, their bloom the fields renew,
The mansion asks its lord, the swains their friend,
While he doth riot's orgies haply share,

Or tempt the gamester's dark destroying snare,

Or at some courtly shrine with slavish incense bend! "

Amidst the various sources of amusement which a country residence offers to its proprietor, the improvement of the appearance of the house and adjacent demesne will ever hold a very high place. Field-sports, at an early season in life, have more of immediate excitation; nor are we amongst those who condemn the gallant chase, though we cannot, now-a-days, follow it: but a country life

has leisure for both, if pursued, as Lady Grace says, moderately; and we can promise our young sportsman, also, that if he studies the pursuits which this article recommends, he will find them peculiarly combined with the establishment of covers, and the protection of game.

Agriculture itself, the most serious occupation of country gentlemen, has points which may be combined with the art we are about to treat of—or, rather, those two pursuits cannot, on many occasions, be kept separate from each other; for we shall have repeated occasion to remark, how much beauty is, in the idea of a spectator, connected with utility, and how much good taste is always offended by obvious and unnecessary expense. These are principles which connect the farm with the pleasureground or demesne.-Lastly, we have Pope's celebrated apology for the profuse expense bestowed on the house and grounds of Canons-if Canons, indeed, was meant

"Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;
Health to himself, and to his children bread,

The labourer bears."

The taste of alterations may be good or bad, but the labour employed upon them must necessarily furnish employment to the most valuable, though often the least considered of the children of the soil,—those, namely, who are engaged in its culti

vation.

Horace Walpole, in a short essay, distinguished by his usual accuracy of information, and ornamented by his wit and taste, has traced the bistory of