[268]
view of all the artificial grounds, and their elaborate ornaments, which we have hitherto seen. Entering upon the rotunda walk, we direct our steps to the alcove, a seat with the same map-like view below it as before; the wood, however, in front investing itself with more majesty by the amphitheatrical form it here assumes. The Gothic seat is our next station, but before we reach it, a little opening at the corner of a walk admits a different sort of landscape to the eye—a fine valley, formed by high wooded banks, through which the river Shell leads his waters down a series of small cascades. All this opens more fully from the Gothic seat, with the addition of Fountain's Abbey, a glorious Gothic ruin, rising out of the meadow immediately in front of the station. For a moment we were imposed upon, by the surprise arising from such a magnificent object bursting upon the view unexpectedly; but as soon as judgment resumed its office, all pleasing emotions were destroyed, by the senseless incongruity and unnatural association in the scene before us. Instead of the wildness and desolation which Nature invariably throws around her ruins, the inevitable effects of neglect and desertion; here all is regularity and correctness, velvet lawns, mathematically formed gravel-walks, and artificial cascades; and no one feature to lead to
