1525. Rivers and rills, we have said, are rather to be improved than created; for we cannot sympathise with that taste which directs the mimicry of so noble a character as a river, or is satisfied with a nearly stagnated rill. We do not consider the river at Blenheim as an exception, because that piece of water was formed by widening a considerable brook. We allude to those wavy serpentine canals, which are never mistaken for natural scenes, and, in almost every case, might be advantageously exchanged for a lake. A rill, however, may have its course rendered more varied, may be expanded at proper places into regular shapes, and all the alterations accounted for and harmonised by planting (fig. 249.).
