ENSTONE;
IN HIS WRITINGS HE DISPLAYED
A MIND NATURAL;
AT LEASOWES HE LAID
ARCADIAN GREENS RURAL.

The Viscomte, though his English composition was so quaint and
imperfect, was an elegant writer in his own language, and showed great
taste and skill in laying out his grounds. He had visited England, and
carefully studied our modern style of gardening. He had personally
consulted Shenstone, Mason, Whateley and other English authors on
subjects of rural taste. He published an eloquent description of his own
estate. His famous friend Rousseau wrote the preface to it. The book was
translated into English. Rousseau spent his last days at Ermenonville
and was buried there in what is called _The Isle of Poplars_. The garden
is now in a neglected state, but the tomb of Rousseau remains uninjured,
and is frequently visited by the admirers of his genius.

"Dr. Warton," says Bowles, "mentions Milton and Pope as the poets to
whom English Landscape is indebted, but _he forgot poor Shenstone_." A
later writer, however, whose sympathy for genius communicates such a
charm to all his anecdotes and comments in illustration of the literary
character, has devoted a chapter of his _Curiosities of Literature_ to a
notice of the rural tastes of the proprietor of the Leasowes. I must
give a brief extract from it.

"When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas
in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for
landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself
constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity. Thus the private
pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole
people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less
notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the
Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford; even the supercilious Gray only
bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his
friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by
nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the
offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire
whether they demand any great powers of mind.' Johnson, however, conveys
to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the
character of 'a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of
Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the
enchanting eulogium of