exciting to the comparison which leads to improvement. But whilst I
gazed, I was employed in restoring the place to nature, or taste, by
giving it the character of the surrounding scene. Serpentine walks,
and flowering-shrubs, looked trifling in a grand recess of the
rooks, shaded by towering pines. Groves of smaller trees might have
been sheltered under them, which would have melted into the
landscape, displaying only the art which ought to point out the
vicinity of a human abode, furnished with some elegance. But few
people have sufficient taste to discern, that the art of
embellishing consists in interesting, not in astonishing.

Christiania is certainly very pleasantly situated, and the environs
I passed through, during this ride, afforded many fine and
cultivated prospects; but, excepting the first view approaching to
it, rarely present any combination of objects so strikingly new, or
picturesque, as to command remembrance. Adieu!



LETTER XIV.



Christiania is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of
architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of
a people--or the outside of the house will disgrace the inside,
giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste.
Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than
Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a
characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the