There is nothing more terrible to travel-writers than a large rich plain, especially if it is without great rivers or bridges; and presents nothing to the eye but one unvaried picture of plenty; for after they have once told you that it is delicious or delightful (as the case may happen); that the soil was grateful and that nature pours out all her abundance, etc., they have then a large plain upon their hands which they know not what to do with and which is of little or no use to them but to carry them to the next town. In “Almoran and Hamet” (Hawkesworth, 1761), an oriental tale, there is no use of Nature except in a few far-fetched similes, and one or two phrases about the lengthening evening shadows. In “Sir Launcelot Greaves” (Smollett, 1762) there is no reference to Nature except in a sarcastic allusion to poets who cannot talk of a beautiful girl without “blending the lily and the rose and bringing in a parcel of similes of cowslips, carnations, pinks, and daisies.” Mrs. Brooke’s “The History of Lady Julia Mandeville” (1763) has a hero and a heroine who rejoice in “a genuine taste for elegant nature,” and their letters contain some descriptive passages evidently intended to combine vividness and elegance. The gardens and parks behind the house are “romantic beyond the wantonness of imagination,” and the whole adjoining country has “every charm of lovely unadorned nature.” Beyond the house there is “an avenue of the tallest trees which lets in the prospect of a fruitful valley, bounded at a distance by a mountain, down the sides of which rushes a foaming cascade, which spreads into a thousand meandering streams in the vale below.” In the woods are rustic temples “in the most elegant style of simplicity.” At the close of a walk they come to a grotto “wildly lovely, its entrance almost hidden by the vines that flaunt over its top,” and there they find an opportune repast with servants in attendance. The motherly care with which Mrs. Brooke preserves her delicately bred characters from roughness or fatigue or hunger interferes somewhat with her attempts to represent “simple, unadorned nature,” and in spite of her protests against “the gloomy haunts of London” she never quite gets out into the free country. Her raptures have a forced, made-up air. The exclamatory ecstacy of such passages as the following is certainly open to suspicion: “What a divine morning! how lovely is the face of nature! The blue serene of Italy with the lovely verdure of England! But behold a more charming object than nature herself! The sweet, the young, the blooming Lady Julia!” There is a more genuine ring to Lady Wilmot’s protest, “The finest landscape is a dreary wild without people.”