One of the quaintest illustrations of the Gothicism of that time is in Mason's 'English Garden.' It is a weary bit of didactic poetry, and a most amiable and lenient critic, Hartley Coleridge, pronounces it to be the dullest poem which he ever attempted to read. It is hard, says Coleridge, to suppose it 'wholly destitute of beauties, especially' (why especially?) 'as it consists of 2,423 lines of blank verse;' but he does not seem to have discovered any. Had the critic persevered to the end of the fourth book, he might at least have been rewarded by a smile at the author. Mason tries to enliven his performance by a story about a pattern man of taste and virtue, named Alcander, whose tragical sorrows are soothed by religion and landscape gardening. It is enough to notice his performances in the last capacity. Alcander, as his name suggests, is an English country gentleman, possessed of an ancient mansion, Coeval with those rich cathedral fanes (Gothic ill-named) whose harmony results From disunited parts. Alcander shows his taste by a restoration in the manner of the time. Let every structure, he proclaims, needful for a farm Arise in castle-semblance; the huge barn Shall with a mock portcullis awe the gate Where Ceres entering, o'er the flail-proof floor In golden triumph rides; some tower rotund Shall to the pigeons and their callow young Safe roost afford, and every buttress broad Whose proud projection seems a mass of stone Give space to stall the heifer and the steed. So shall each part, though turned to rural use, Deceive the eye with those bold feudal farms Which fancy loves to gaze on. He afterwards adopts a similar method To hide the structure rude where Winter pounds In conic pit his congelations hoar; concealing his ice-house and dairy behind a modern 'time-struck abbey.' Alcander thus displays those admirable qualities of head and heart which enable him to bear with resignation the melancholy death of a beloved object. He finally consoles himself by placing her monument in a sham hermitage. The Gothic revival of a century ago sounds absurd enough to our ears, and it must be confessed that our foolery is more systematic and scientific, as it is probably more destructive. Alcander, happily, did not 'restore' his castle, though he surrounded it with those queer farm buildings and brand-new ruins. Pope, it seems, had set the fashion of landscape gardening on the little plot of ground which, as Horace Walpole tells us, he had 'twisted and twirled, and rhymed and harmonised, till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns, opening and opening beyond one another, the whole surrounded with thick, impenetrable woods.' Mason, Spence, Shenstone, and other persons of literary note helped, according to their opportunities, to promote the revolt against the old-fashioned style in which, as Mason puts it, Folly combined with Wealth