In these parts of the garden then, which are destined immediately for the gratification, not of the eye, but merely of the palate, it is only in proportion as we more fully deviate from the desultory and confused dispositions of simple nature—firstly, by separating the different species of esculent plants, not only from their useless neighbors, but from each other; and secondly, by confining the vegetables thus classed in those symmetric and measured compartments, which enable us with greater ease to discover, to approach, and to improve each different species in the precise way, most congenial to its peculiar requisites, that we more fully attain that first of intellectual beauties, which, in every production, whether of nature or of art, resides in the exact correspondence between the end we propose and the means we employ. Nay, if it be true that contrast and variety of colors and of forms are amongst the most essential ingredients of visible beauty, we may say that even this species of sensible charm is greatly increased in the aspect of a country by the opposition to the more widely diffused, but more vague shades and outlines of the unsymmetrical surrounding landscape, offered by the more vivid hues and more distinct forms of the gay Mosaic work of nicely classed and symmetrized vegetables which clothe these select spots. Even where the general unadorned scenery is as bold and majestic as in Switzerland, or as rich and luxuriant as in Sicily, the eye with rapture beholds the variety, and enjoys the relief from the vaster and sublimer features of rude Nature, offered by the professed art of a neat little patch of ground, whether field, orchard, or garden, symmetrically distributed. It looks like a small but rich gem—a topaz, an emerald, or a ruby, sparkling amidst vast heaps of ruder ore; or rather like a rich carpet, spread out over a corner of the valley. It appears thus incontrovertible, that in that part at least of the garden which is immediately intended for utility, we incidentally produce not only greater intellectual, but greater visible beauty, by not confining ourselves to the desultory forms of unguided Nature, but by admitting the more symmetric outlines of avowed art, and it therefore only remains to be inquired, whether in that other and different part of the artificial grounds, in later times added to the former, which is directly intended for beauty, and which we therefore call the pleasure-grounds, we shall really produce more beauty, intellectual or visible, or, in other words, more pleasure to the mind or eye, by only employing the powers of art in a covert and unavowed way; in still only preserving the closest resemblance to the interminable and irregular forms of mere nature, or by exhibiting her additional resources in a more open and avowed manner; in contrasting these more indeterminate and desultory features of pure nature, with some of those more