ss to complete his _Observations_,
that he for a short while "suspended his design" of examining other
characters of the poet, when the bright effusions of his genius "fled up
to the stars from whence they came." This elegant little work is merely
a fragment, nay, even an unfinished fragment. It must, then, cause deep
regret, that death should so prematurely have deprived us of that rich
treasure of animated thoughts, which, no doubt, would have sprung from
his further tracing the poet's deep and piercing knowledge of the human
heart. One may safely apply to Mr. Whateley, what he himself applies to
the poet:--"He had a genius to express all that his penetration could
discover." The Journal Encyclopedique, Juilliet, 1771, when speaking of
the French translation of Whateley's Observations, says, "On ne peut
gueres se faire une idee de ces jardins, si l'on n'a ete a Londres.
Accoutumes a la symetrie des notres, nous n'imaginons pas qu'on puisse
etablir une forme irreguliere, comme une regle principale: cependant
ceux qui sentent combien la noble simplicite de la nature est superieure
a tous les rafinemens symetriques de l'art, donneront peuetetre la
preference aux jardins Anglois. C'est l'effet que doit produire la
lecture de cet ouvrage, qui quoique destine aux amateurs et aux
compositeurs des jardins, offre aux gens de gout, aux artistes et
sur-tout aux peintres, des observations fines et singulieres sur
plusieurs effets de perspective et sur les arts en general; aux
philosophes, des reflections justes sur les affections de notre ame; aux
poetes, des descriptions exactes, quoique vives, des plus beaux jardins
d'Angleterre dans tous les genres, qui decelent dans l'Auteur un oeil
infiment exerce, une grande connoissance des beaux arts, une belle
imagination et un esprit accoutume a penser."

The "bloom of an orchard, the festivity of a hay field, and the carols
of harvest home," could not have met with a more cheerful and benevolent
pen than Mr. Whateley's; a love of country pervades many of his pages;
nor could any one have traced the placid scenery, or rich magnificence
of nature, with a happier pen than when he records the walk to the
cottage at Claremont, the grandeur and majesty of the scene at
_Blenheim_, or _Stowe_, _Persfield_, _Wotton_ in the vale of
Aylesbury--the rugged, savage, and craggy points of _Middleton Dale_, "a
chasm rent in the mountain by some convulsion of nature, beyond the
memory of man, or perhaps