ding walks. There is an adjacent
stand, on which the gardener places himself, to extricate the
adventuring stranger by his directions. Switzer condemns this plan for
having only four stops and gives a plan for one with twenty.--_Loudon_.

[111] The lower part of Bengal, not far from Calcutta, is here described

[112] Sir William Jones states that the Brahmins believe that the _blue_
champac flowers only in Paradise, it being yellow every where else.

[113] The wild dog of Bengal

[114] The elephant.

[115] Even Jeremy Bentham, the great Utilitarian Philosopher, who
pronounced the composition and perusal of poetry a mere amusement of no
higher rank than the game of Pushpin, had still something of the common
feeling of the poetry of nature in his soul. He says of himself--"_I was
passionately fond of flowers from my youth, and the passion has never
left me._" In praise of botany he would sometimes observe, "_We cannot
propagate stones_:" meaning that the mineralogist cannot circulate his
treasures without injuring himself, but the botanist can multiply his
specimens at will and add to the pleasures of others without lessening
his own.

[116] A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures
that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a
picture and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a
secret refreshment in a description, _and often feels a greater
satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in
the possession_.--_Spectator_.

[117] Kent died in 1748 in the 64th year of his age. As a painter he had
no great merit, but many men of genius amongst his contemporaries had
the highest opinion of his skill as a Landscape-gardener. He sometimes,
however, carried his love of the purely natural to a fantastic excess,
as when in Kensington-garden he planted dead trees to give an air of
wild truth to the landscape.

In Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and nature strove for Pelham's love,

this landscape-gardener is said to have exhibited a very remarkable
degree of taste and judgment. I cannot resist the temptation to quote
here Horace Walpole's eloquent account of Kent: "At that moment appeared
Kent, painter and poet enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and
opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to
strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He
leaped the fence and saw that a