pencil's power; but fix'd by higher hopes
Of beauty than that pencil knew to paint,
Work'd with the living lives that _nature_ lent,
And realized his landscapes.

Mr. Pope, as well as Kent, would, and Mr. Walpole, and Mr. Mason, must
each of them have read with high approbation the following remark of the
late Sir Uvedale Price:--"the noble and varied works of the eminent
painters of every age and every country, and those of their supreme
mistress, Nature, should be the great models of imitation."

Mr. Whateley paints in glowing language, the genius of Kent, both at
Stowe, and at Claremont. Mr. George Mason thus honestly and finely
pleads for him:--"According to my own ideas, all that has since been
done by the most deservedly admired designers, as Southcote, Hamilton,
Lyttleton, Pitt, Shenstone, Morris, for themselves, and by Wright for
others, all that has been written on the subject, even the gardening
didactic poem, and the didactic essay on the picturesque, have proceeded
from Kent. Had Kent never exterminated the bounds of regularity, never
actually traversed the way to freedom of manner, would any of these
celebrated artists have found it of themselves? Theoretic hints from the
highest authorities, had evidently long existed without sufficient
effect. And had not these great masters actually executed what Kent's
example first inspired, them with, the design of executing, would the
subsequent writers on gardening have been enabled to collect materials
for precepts, or stores for their imaginations? Mr. Price acknowledges
himself an admirer of the water-scene at Blenheim. Would it ever have
appeared in its present shape, if no Kent had previously abolished the
stiffness of canals! If this original artist had barely rescued the
liquid element from the constraint of right lines and angles, that
service alone would have given him an indubitable claim to the respect
of posterity." The Rev. Mr. Coventry, in his admirable exposure of the
grotesque absurdities in gardening, (being No. 15 of the World) thus
speaks of Kent:--"The great Kent at length appeared in behalf of nature,
declared war against the taste in fashion, and laid the axe to the root
of artificial evergreens. Gardens were no longer filled with yews in the
shape of giants, Noah's ark cut in holly, St. George and the Dragon in
box, cypress lovers, laurustine bears, and all that race of root-born
monsters which flourished so long, and looked so treme