But the most beautiful scenery in the world, whether the work of nature alone, or the result of nature aided by art, will soon cease to please, unless it bears marks of its appropriation to man, or can raise up associations of that kind. Hence, the tourist, who admires natural scenery in travelling through a beautiful country, endeavours to make it his own, and to let others know that he has done so, either by describing it in words which he can read to his friends, or which he can print, and thus publish to the world (thereby showing that he has as fully enjoyed the beauties of the scenery as if it were his own); or he commits the scenery to paper by a sketch, by which he seems also to appropriate it to himself. The purchaser of a portion of the finest scenery in the world never rests satisfied until he has done something to it; and it is not enough to do something, however great a change that something may have produced, unless it be such as to be recognised by the rest of mankind. It is absolutely necessary that what is done should be discoverable as a work of art and taste. Hence, among purely natural scenery, some work of art must be introduced. Building is the common resource: but even a gravel walk, to show off the natural beauties of the scene, with seats or resting-places formed along it at proper points of view, will suffice. Admitting this principle to be founded in nature, it is not to be supposed that Mr. Wells, after having improved the general scenery of Redleaf, would rest satisfied with admiring what he had done: on the contrary, having improved the natural beauties of the place, he immediately set about adding to them the beauties of art, by the formation of what may be strictly called garden scenery. Now, the great merit of Mr. Wells as an amateur artist is, that, while he has heightened and improved the natural beauties of Redleaf, he has been constantly employed, for the last thirty years, in creating artificial beauties there, which do not, in the slightest degree, interfere with the great leading natural features of the place. There are very few other proprietors who would not, while improving such a place as Redleaf, have done violence to the natural character of the place, by the evident intrusion of art.
