Thus, on a remote country-road, we often observe the deep ruts on its surface which in winter would render it impassable--the huge and loose moss-grown stone, ready to encumber it by falling from the bank--the stunted pollard by its side, whose roots are exposed by the earth falling away from it, and which must itself be swept away by the first wind that may blow against it in an unfavorable direction--the almost ruined cottage, above and beyond these, whose gable is propped up by an old and broken wheel, and whose thatched roof, stained with every hue of moss or lichen, has, at one part, long fallen in--the shaggy and ragged horse that browses among the rank weeds around it--and the old man, bent with age, who leans over the broken gate in front of it. Here, in every circumstance, is verified the irregularity and roughness which Price ascribes to the picturesque. But he has failed to observe, that _the irregularity and roughness are but the signs of that which interests the mind far more deeply_, namely, the universal DECAY which causes them. This is the essence of the picturesque--the charm in it which begets our sympathy. Confining his remark merely to ruins, the author of "Observations on Gardening," says: "At the sight of a ruin, reflections on the change, the decay, and the desolation, before us naturally occur; and they introduce a long succession of others, all tinctured with that melancholy which these have inspired; or if the monument revive the memory of former times, we do not stop at the simple fact which it records, but recollect many more coeval circumstances which we see, nor perhaps as they were, but as they are come down to us, venerable with age, and magnified by fame."--What is here said of ruins, and is indeed as to them sufficiently striking, is true of the picturesque universally, and it is only surprising that, amid such disputes, this simple and obvious truth should not have been observed. In landscape, therefore, the picturesque stands in the same relation to the beautiful and sublime, that the pathetic does to them in poetry. Hence, speaking also of ruins only, Alison says: "The images suggested by the prospect of ruins, are images belonging to pity, to melancholy, and to admiration." A thousand illustrations might be given in support of this truth and the principle which it affords; but I think it better to leave these to the suggestion or the choice of every reader. SECTION II. CAUSE OF LAUGHTER. This has been partly explained by Beattie, partly by Hobbes; and it is chiefly to vindicate the latter, who knew much more of the human mind than the people who have attacked him, that I write the pages immediately following.