The improvements, when the place was sufficiently tranquil to admit of any, though absurd and monstrous in themselves, were confined (as our present Laureate has observed, I remember, in one of his essays) to an acre or two about the house in the shape of garden with terraces, &c.  So that Nature had greatly the advantage in those days, when what has been called English gardening was unheard of.  This is now beginning to be perceived, and we are setting out to travel backwards.  Painters and poets have had the credit of being reckoned the fathers of English gardening; they will also have, hereafter, the better praise of being fathers of a better taste.  Error is in general nothing more than getting hold of good things, as every thing has two handles, by the wrong one.  It was a misconception of the meaning and principles of poets and painters which gave countenance to the modern system of gardening, which is now, I hope, on the decline; in other words, we are submitting to the rule which you at present are guided by, that of having our houses belong to the country, which will of course lead us back to the simplicity of Nature.  And leaving your own individual sentiments and present work out of the question, what good can come of any other guide, under any circumstances?  We have, indeed, distinctions of rank, hereditary legislators, and large landed proprietors; but from numberless causes the state of society is so much altered, that nothing of that lofty or imposing interest, formerly attached to large property in land, can now exist; none of the poetic pride, and pomp, and circumstance; nor anything that can be considered as making amends for violation done to the holiness of Nature.  Let us take an extreme case, such as a residence of a Duke of Norfolk, or Northumberland:  of course you would expect a mansion, in some degree answerable to their consequence, with all conveniences.  The names of Howard and Percy will always stand high in the regards of Englishmen; but it is degrading, not only to such families as these, but to every really interesting one, to suppose that their importance will be most felt where most displayed, particularly in the way I am now alluding to.  This is contracting a general feeling into a local one.  Besides, were it not so, as to what concerns the Past, a man would be sadly astray, who should go, for example, to modernise Alnwick and its dependencies, with his head full of the ancient Percies:  he would find nothing there which would remind him of them, except by contrast; and of that kind of admonition he would, indeed, have enough.  But this by the bye, for it is against the principle itself I am contending, and not the misapplication of it.  After what was said above, I may ask, if anything connected with the families of Howard and Percy, and their rank and influence, and thus with the state of government and society, could, in the present age, be deemed a recompence for their thrusting themselves in between us and Nature.  Surely it