[3] In one other respect Natura belongs to the new rather than to the old school: he takes genuine delight in the wilder beauties of the landscape. "Whether you climb the craggy mountains or traverse the flowery vale; whether thick woods set limits to the sight, or the wide common yields unbounded prospect; whether the ocean rolls in solemn state before you, or gentle streams run purling by your side, nature in all her different shapes delights.... The stupendous mountains of the Alps, after the plains and soft embowered recesses of Avignon, gave perhaps a no less grateful sensation to the mind of Natura." Such extraordinary appreciation in an age that regarded mountains as frightful excrescences upon the face of nature, makes the connoisseur of the passions a pioneer of the coming age rather than a survival of the last. [4] J. Ireland and J. Nichols, _Hogarth's Works_, Second Series, 31, note. "Mrs. Haywood's _Betsy Thoughtless_ was in MS entitled _Betsy Careless_; but, from the infamy at that time annexed to the name, had a new baptism." The "inimitable Betsy Careless" is sufficiently immortalized in Fielding's _Amelia_, in Mrs. Charke's _Life_, and in Hogarth's _Marriage à la Mode_, Plate III. [5] Austin Dobson, _Eighteenth Century Vignettes_, Third Series, 99. [6] "There were no plays, no operas, no masquerades, no balls, no publick shews, except at the Little Theatre in the Hay Market, then known by the name of F----g's scandal shop, because he frequently exhibited there certain drolls, or, more properly, invectives against the ministry; in doing which it appears extremely probable that he had two views; the one to get money, which he very much wanted, from such as delighted in low humour, and could not distinguish true satire from scurrility; and the other, in the hope of having some post given him by those he had abused, in order to silence his dramatick talent. But it is not my business to point either the merit of that gentleman's performances, or the motives he had for writing them, as the town is perfectly acquainted both with his abilities and success, and has since seen him, with astonishment, wriggle himself into favour, by pretending to cajole those he had not the power to intimidate." _The Novelist's Magazine_, XIII, 23. Quoted by Austin Dobson, _Op. cit._, 100. [7] Dedication of _The Fatal Secret_. [8] _The Novelist's Magazine_, XIII, 106. Quoted by W. Forsyth, _Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century_ (1871), 211. [9] W. Raleigh, _The English Novel_ (Fifth edition, 1910), 139. [10] J.C. Dunlop, _History of Prose Fiction_, edited by H. Wilson, II, 568. [11] _Monthly Review_, V, 393, October, 1751. [12] _Letters from the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu_, Everyman edition, 392. [13] _Letters from the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu_, Everyman edition, 457.