I have formerly told you what sort of art we employ in our Chinese Gardening; I now recommend it to your imitation; and though in general your European artificial manner appears not to me perfect, yet doth it contain many things highly deserving notice, which you have imprudently laid aside, without substituting any equivalent. To instance the Gardens of France; they are, I will allow, sufficiently extravagant: you hear of nothing but islands of love, or halls of festivity; every recess is the retreat of a God, every prospect a scene of enchantment: like their petit maitres, they are all out of nature, all affectation; yet it is an affectation often delightful, and absurdity generally overflowing with taste and fancy: in their best works there is such a mysterious, pleasing intricacy in the disposition, such variety in the objects, so much splendour and animation in the scenery, and so much skill apparent in the execution of every part, that the attention of the spectator never flags; the succession is so rapid, that he is hurried on from one exhibition to another, with his mind constantly upon the stretch: he has only time to be pleased; there is no leisure to reflect, none to be disgusted with the extravagance of what he sees. If their Gardens are less rational than yours, they are certainly much more entertaining; and though, upon the whole, they can by no means be proposed as models for imitation, yet are there many things to be borrowed from them, which might be adopted by you with considerable advantage. I may say the same with regard to the Italian Gardens, of which the style is less affected, less extravagant than in those of France: the heat of the climate obliges the inhabitants to seek for shade; the walks are sheltered, the plantations close, whence their compositions have a gloom, and an air of solitude that are exceedingly awful. There is a grandeur of manner in all their works, seldom to be met with elsewhere; which, about Rome, and in some other parts of Italy, is greatly heightened by the majestick face of Nature, framed upon a larger scale, and broken into nobler forms, than in most other countries. Their vegetation too is uncommonly picturesque; the abundance of water with which they are every where supplied, enables them to form a thousand pleasing combinations; and the venerable vestiges of ancient structures, which rear their decaying heads above the plantations, add surprizingly to the dignity of the scenery.