CHAPTER X.

OF THE PICTURESQUE.

THE works of ancient art, in their simple and perfect symmetry, declared their conformity to rule; but in many of modern times, a fine effect is obtained by a course directly the opposite-that is, by concealing all design upon beauty, and by even appearing to violate her laws. As when, in laying out a garden, we avoid the regularity of straight, circular, elliptic, or otherwise formed outlines, and adopt apparently accidental curves, plant our trees not in rows or phalanxes, or any shape of recognized elegance, but in such a way as they might have grown up by nature-introducing here and there a seeming deformity, a rude grey rock, or view of a moldering ruin, and deem it a singular good feature to have an old and lofty tree, with branches shattered by the storm-we aim at a high artistic end, by a seemingly utter rejection of art. In this case, we not only conceal art, but appear even to spurn and reject it—to run wild from all its constraints; and yet, the end we seek is beauty, and the care we

take to exclude every element inconsistent therewith, is most scrupulous. While refusing to array our trees in shapes of formal order, to plant them in actual disorder will not answer the purpose. We throw them here into a careless looking group, there into a straggling column, in one place sprinkle them over the lawn, and in another, crowd them into a dark thicket; but so that the group, obstructing one view, may direct the eye to a better that the column, though apparently an imperfect, accidental thing, may open up from some position where, unexpectedly, a majestic avenue forms a vista to some distant and effective point, and that both may present themselves from different points of view, in a variety of spirited and striking aspects; or, in short, that the various elements may so combine as to produce upon the whole one beautiful effect, which could not have been anticipated from any of the parts.

This is not the mere concealing of effort, belonging to the finish of all good works of art: it is the appearance of being wildly free from rules-the exclusion from the work, of every ostensible mark that it is a work at all-the insertion of features that seem boldly to contradict rule, and that with the very design of producing upon the whole a highly refined variety of beauty, which no obvious conformity to rules could ever attain.

Such, I think, is the nature of the picturesque. The word, like many others, very inadequate if

taken etymologically, is by common usage sufficiently defined, and appropriated to its derivative sense, while that of being like a picture has become almost obsolete. Its common acceptation now, is the disposal of heterogeneous elements into such a manner as to produce the effect, upon the whole, of beautiful wildness.

It is essential to the picturesque that, together with elements of gentle loveliness, it should embrace others which are rude, irregular, gloomy, stern, savage, surprising, or otherwise at variance with formal beauty, and yet, that all should harmoniously conspire in one pleasing result. No formal lines, nor parallelograms, nor circles of trees, however elegant, can in themselves be picturesque, because they exclude the element of irregularity. So, on the other hand, a plantation of trees actually without any order, would fail of the same effect, from want of unity. In the one case the whole would be marred by a show of art-in the other by being without meaning. The tameness of the formal, no less than of the inane, is fatal to the picturesque, which might be designated, in one expression, as the beauty of wildness. Contrast is an important ingredient in its composition. Sometimes the rude is contrasted with the gentle, as, in medieval society, the gentleness of ladies and of knightly courtesy with the rudeness of military occupation and of common life; sometimes wild, barren scenery with the rich and lovely-a view of a craggy mountain is opened up

through the vista.of an elegant landscape; sometimes the quiet of uncultivated nature meets the eye, amid the elaborate devices of art, as when the walks of a garden lead us to a little lake, slumbering in the bosom of a wooded dell; sometimes the gay is contrasted with the gloomy, light with darkness, etc., as in the opening of the first canto of Marmion, where the busy castle and the fair river are set over against the rude and lonely mountains-and the wretched gloom of the captives within is, by a beautiful stroke of the imagination, brought into contrast with the joyous light outside-and the dark, moving figures of the warriors are relieved against the light of the evening sky. And yet, to be contrasted is not enough. All these images are conducive to graphic delineation of the calm of sunset over a feudal scene; which is beautifully finished by the still further contrast of the warder pacing to and fro to the time of his border gathering song, beneath the drooping flag, which the evening wind has scarcely strength to wave.

"Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone;

The battled towers, the donjon keep,

The loop-hole grates where captives weep,

The flanking walls that round it sweep,

In yellow lustre shone.

The warriors on the turrets high,

Moving athwart the evening sky,

Seemed forms of giant hight;
Their armor, as it caught the rays,
Flashed back again the western blaze,
In lines of dazzling light.
St. George's banner broad and gay,
Now faded as the fading ray

Less bright and less was flung;

The evening gale had scarce the power
To wave it on the donjon tower,
So heavily it hung.

The scouts had parted on their search,
The castle gates were barred,

Above the gloomy portal arch,
Timing his footsteps to a march,

The warder kept his guard-
Low humming as he paced along,

Some ancient border gathering song,

Similar illustrations might be copied in great numbers from the same poem-as from the close of the battle of Flodden, and from the death of Marmion, where, almost within sweep of the tempest of battle, Clara finds the well of Sybil Grey; from the picture of the ruined but still resisting and impenetrable fragment of the Scottish army, as

"Utter darkness closed her wing

O'er their thin host and wounded king;"

And from which the English troops withdrew,

"As mountain waves from wasted lands,

Sweep back to ocean blue;"