r minds.

* * * * *

It is very late to mention, that when in Wales, last autumn, I contrived
to pass a day and a half with your friend Price at Foxley. He was very
kind, and took due pains to show me all the beauties of his place. I
should have been very insensible not to be pleased with, and grateful
for, his attentions; and certainly I was gratified by the sight of the
scenes through which he conducted me.

* * * * *

I was less able to do justice in my own mind to the scenery of Foxley.
You will, perhaps, think it a strange fault that I am going to find with
it, considering the acknowledged taste of the owner, viz. that, small as
it is compared with hundreds of places, the domain is too extensive for
the character of the country. Wanting both rock and water, it
necessarily wants variety; and in a district of this kind, the portion
of a gentleman's estate which he keeps exclusively to himself, and which
he devotes, wholly or in part, to ornament, may very easily exceed the
proper bounds,--not, indeed, as to the preservation of wood, but most
easily as to every thing else. A man by little and little becomes so
delicate and fastidious with respect to forms in scenery, where he has a
power to exercise a control over them, that if they do not exactly
please him in all moods and every point of view, his power becomes his
law; he banishes one, and then rids himself of another; impoverishing
and _monotonising_ landscapes, which, if not originally distinguished
by the bounty of Nature, must be ill able to spare the inspiriting
varieties which art, and the occupations and wants of life in a country
left more to itself, never fail to produce. This relish of humanity
Foxley wants, and is therefore to me, in spite of all its
recommendations, a melancholy spot,--I mean that part of it which the
owner keeps to himself, and has taken so much pains with. I heard the
other day of two artists who thus expressed themselves upon the subject
of a scene among our lakes: 'Plague upon those vile enclosures!' said
one; 'they spoil everything.' 'Oh,' said the other, 'I never _see_
them.' Glover was the name of this last. Now, for my part, I should not
wish to be either of these gentlemen; but to have in my own mind the
power of turning to advantage, wherever it is possible, every object of
art and nature as they appear before me. What a noble instance, as you
have often pointed