landscape-gardening with profitable returns.

I take leave of him with a single excerpt from his admirable chapter of
Gardening in the "Elements of Criticism":--"Other fine arts may be
perverted to excite irregular, and even vicious emotions; but gardening,
which inspires the purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to
promote every good affection. The gayety and harmony of mind it
produceth inclineth the spectator to communicate his satisfaction to
others, and to make them happy as he is himself, and tends naturally to
establish in him a habit of humanity and benevolence."

It is humiliating to reflect, that a thievish orator at one of our
Agricultural Fairs might appropriate page after page out of the
"Gentleman Farmer" of Lord Kames, written in the middle of the last
century, and the county-paper, and the aged directors, in clean
shirt-collars and dress-coats, would be full of praises "of the
enlightened views of our esteemed fellow-citizen." And yet at the very
time when the critical Scotch judge was meditating his book, there was
erected a land light-house, called Dunston Column, upon Lincoln Heath,
to guide night travellers over a great waste of land that lay a
half-day's ride south of Lincoln. And when Lady Robert Manners, who had
a seat at Bloxholme, wished to visit Lincoln, a groom or two were sent
out the morning before to explore a good path, and families were not
unfrequently lost for days[J] together in crossing the heath. And this
same heath, made up of a light fawn-colored sand, lying on "dry, thirsty
stone," was, twenty years since at least, blooming all over with rank,
dark lines of turnips; trim, low hedges skirted the level highways; neat
farm-cottages were flanked with great saddle-backed ricks; thousands
upon thousands of long-woolled sheep cropped the luxuriant pasturage,
and the Dunston column was down.