AQUILIUS.—We have; and of late years they have greatly improved in subjects. They at least now look for what is beautiful. The old dead stump, the dunghill, and horse and cart, the pig and the donkey, are no longer considered to be the requisites for English landscape. One has seen publications called English landscape, which must give foreigners a very miserable idea of our country. Cottage scenery, too, has had its day. The old well is dry—the girl married, it is to be hoped, and the pitcher broken. The lane and gipsies, the cross sticks and the crock, are not dissolving but dissolved views. In time, the turnpike road and ruddled sheep going to the butcher will be thought but ill to represent the pastoral. When the mutton has been eaten up—and I hope the artists get their fair share—I wish they would be satisfied, and know when they have had enough. The Act of Parliament we spoke of, should exclude creatures with the ruddle on their backs, and butcher-boys, and men in smock-frocks and low hats, and pitchforks. We have had enough of this kind of pastoral; they are not the “gentle shepherds,” that should people the Arcadia within England, or any other. I would have Rosalind and her farm, without the clown. The French and Dresden china shepherds and shepherdesses, as we see them prettily smiling, and garlanding their pet lambs, as something extra parochial, and _sui generis_, show at least this happiness, that they do not eat their bread by the sweat of their brows. All landscape that reminds you of “the curse of the earth, of the dire necessity of toil, of the beggarly destitution test,” of dingy earths and dirty weather, are, you may be sure, far out of the hearing of Pan’s pipe. He does not adjust his lips to music for the overseer and exciseman, nor rate collectors. Nay, when Pan retires to visit his estate in Arcadia, and Robin Hood reigns, he will have no such ink-horn gentry partake of his venison. The freedom of nature loves not the visible restrictions of law. I would be bold enough to lay it down as a truth, that it is as possible to get poetry out of the earth, as swedes and mangel-wurzel. Let landscape painters look to it, lest they get into bad habits before the act is out, and, of a hard necessity, incur the penalty. GRATIAN.—Stay, stay,—where are you running to? Surely if a painter takes a _bonâ fide_ view, you would not have him turn the milk-maid out of the field, to bring in Diana and her train. AQUILIUS.—Views! oh, I thought we were speaking of Pastoral. That is quite another thing; I am somewhat of Fuseli’s opinion, who said, speaking contemptuously, “I mean those things called Views.” CURATE.—But you will admit, Aquilius, that we have real scenes that are very beautiful, always pleasing to look at, and therefore fit to be painted. Is there not our lake scenery?