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The subject of oriental gardens was also much discussed in prose and verse. Sir William Chambers was the first important champion of the methods of Chinese gardens. He liked the "fancies and surprises" of Chinese effects and thought that Kent's plans made English gardens "no better than so many fields." His essay appeared in 1757.1 Goldsmith's Description of a Chinese Garden came out in 1760. In 1772 came Sir William Chambers' Dissertation on Oriental Gardens. This brought out two replies from Mason in 1773 and 1774. The best practical illustration of this style of gardening was to be seen at Kew Gardens which Chambers remodeled. On the whole; however, oriental gardening was a fad that soon passed away without having exerted much influence. It is significant of the turning towards far countries, the romantic interest in the new and the remote, and is to be classed as a sign with the oriental and eastern Eclogues in the poetry of the period.

Incomplete and cursory as so short a study of so great a subject must be, the facts here presented seem to warrant the following statements:

The feeling toward nature in the period studied shows in gardening the same order of development, nearly the same dates, and the same phases as in poetry. There was first in both a pleased recognition of the supremacy of man, a rigid exclusiveness, a love of order, and symmetry, and of definite limits. Then came, in the early eighteenth century, a tentative turning from art to nature; then an epoch-making statement in each art, Thomson's Seasons from 1726 to 1730, and Pope's Epistle in 1731. From this point on the development was in mass and variety rather than in the enunciation of new principles. The growing love for wild nature in the poetry, and the passion for the picturesque in gar1 The rage for Chinese buildings began earlier than this for in The World March 27, 1755, is a plea by Marriott for an "anti-Chinese society." See also a similar letter in Feb. 1754. For a similar taste in furniture see a letter in March, 1753. In April, 1753, Coventry satirizes the Chinese bridges and buildings in gardens. Even so far back as Sir William Temple much had been said about Chinese gardens. For criticism of their artificiality see Walpole's On Modern Gardening. For a defense of the Chinese theory as an attempt to follow nature see Humboldt's Kosmos.

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dening proceed side by side. At the end of the century all is
ready in both arts for the splendid work of the new era. Through-
out the century both have had curiously correspondent offshoots
or temporary fads-sentimental melancholy in poetry, and the
ruins, artificial and real, in gardening; foreign eclogues and
studies of distant countries in the one art, and Chinese gardens
in the other.

CHAPTER IV.

TRAVELS.

Pink

It is impossible to do more here than merely to sketch the possibilities in a "History of the Tour and the Guide Book," because the mass of material to be gone over is so great. erton's Catalogue of Voyages and Travels, published in 1814, gives over 4500 books. It is so elaborately tabulated that it is not easy to use, but it is possible to cull from its voluminous pages a fairly compendious list of such travels as were published in England in the eighteenth century. In this list there are about 360 books. Of these 360 books all but 84 are travels outside of Great Britain and Ireland. Their distribution through the century indicates a steady growth of interest in foreign lands, for nearly half of the accounts of travels in other countries belong in the last quarter of the century. The same pushing out of the romantic spirit in its curiosity to know the remote is shown by another interesting transfer of emphasis, half of the Travels before 1750 being devoted to Great Britain and Ireland, while after 1775, less than one-fifth of the whole number is given up to home explorations. But these foreign tours, however interesting as one note of Romanticism, are outside the present field of inquiry. They were undertaken usually with some definite purpose. Antiquities, curiosities, minerals; laws, manners, customs; utilitarian possibilities these were the leading subjects of inquiry. In the titles such phrases as, "relating chiefly to the history, antiquities, and geography;" "remarks on Characters and Manners;" "chiefly relative to the knowledge of mankind, industry, literature, and natural history;" "with an account of the most memorable sieges;" "containing a great variety of geographical, topographical and political observations; "containing specially a description of fortified towns;" "con

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taining a Picture of the Country, the Manners, and the Actual Government," are of constant recurrence and serve to mark out the general scope of these works. There are, to be sure, in these books, many scattered descriptions of the natural scenes visited. This is especially true of the Travels in the last quarter of the century. But to study these descriptions, even superficially, would be too wide a work for the present limits. Furthermore, the accounts of the tours made in the United Kingdom will doubtless reveal the characteristics of the observations made in foreign lands.

One of the early books of English travel in the eighteenth century is Mr. Martin's Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1704). It is this book that stirred Dr. Johnson to make his visit to the Hebrides, and it is from this that Mallet drew the details for his Amyntor and Theodora. In the Preface Martin says:

a native of

"Perhaps it is peculiar to those isles, that they have never been described till now by any man that was the country, or had traveled them.. "Descriptions of countries, without the natural histories of them, are now justly reckoned to be defective. This I had a particular regard to in the following descriptions, and have everywhere taken notice of the nature of the climate and soil, and of the remarkable cures performed by the natives merely by the use of simples."

This preliminary promise of first-hand observation, especially so far as nature is concerned, is hardly carried out. The book is a credulous, entertaining, unsifted narrative of whatever marvels came to his ears. His interest rested chiefly on strange cures made by the use of "simples." The Description has the negative importance of entirely ignoring nature. In its 120 pages there as not a word or phrase in recognition of the wild and beautiful scenery in these islands.

The same distinction holds of Brand's Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth, and Caithness (1701). Brand was one of a commission sent by the General Assembly to inquire into religious matters in the northern islands, so it is not

strange that he bestows much attention on heathenish and popish rites, charms, and superstitions. He is also much interested in the prevailing diseases and the means of cure employed by the natives. And he says much of their customs, manners, and personal appearance. He describes the crops, the climate, the favorite articles of food, but his eyes are holden to the charms of scenery.

In 1715 appeared Alexander Pennecuik's Description of Tweeddale. He was a physician and for thirty years his employment had obliged him to know and observe every corner of Tweeddale. He found great pleasure in "herbalizing shady groves and mountains," and the chief value of his work is accordingly in its numerous botanical observations. Not a stray sentence indicates pleasure in the beauty of the Lowland mountains.

Except for the work of Brand, Martin, and Pennecuik, the first half of the century shows but a meager list of travels. Besides eight Tours published anonymously, Pinkerton records only Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale (in Scotland and Northern England) in 1726, and Macky's Journey through England in 1732. In 1762 appeared Hamilton's Letters from Antrim, the chief subject of which was announced to be "the Natural History of the Basaltes." Mr. Hamilton spoke occasionally of the beautiful and picturesque appearance of the Irish coast, but he professed himself an advocate of Mr. Locke's system of a dictionary of pictures in preference to a dictionary of tedious descriptions. From 1764 to 1769 Mr. Bushe added his contribution to Irish Travels, the objects dwelt upon in his Hiberna Curiosa being "Manners, observations on the state of Trade and Agriculture, and Natural Curiosities."

Much of the work in Travels or Tours in the eighteenth century is thrown into the form of familiar letters. By far the most important of these tourists' letters from the present point of view is Dr. Brown's description of Keswick in a letter to Lyttleton. This letter was published in 1772, but its date is difficult to determine. It was before 1766, for that is the year of the author's death. Even this date puts it with John Buncle and Dr.