Here Nature
indeed pours forth the choicest treasures which she hath lavished on
this world; and here human nature presents you with an object which
can be exceeded only in the other.
The same taste, the same imagination, which luxuriously riots in
these elegant scenes, can be amused with objects of far inferior note.
The woods, the rivers, the lawns of Devon and of Dorset, attract the
eye of the ingenious traveller, and retard his pace, which delay he
afterwards compensates by swiftly scouring over the gloomy heath of
Bagshot, or that pleasant plain which extends itself westward from
Stockbridge, where no other object than one single tree only in
sixteen miles presents itself to the view, unless the clouds, in
compassion to our tired spirits, kindly open their variegated mansions
to our prospect.
Not so travels the money-meditating tradesman, the sagacious
justice, the dignified doctor, the warm-clad grazier, with all the
numerous offspring of wealth and dulness. On they jog, with equal
pace, through the verdant meadows or over the barren heath, their
horses measuring four miles and a half per hour with the utmost
exactness; the eyes of the beast and of his master being alike
directed forwards, and employed in contemplating the same objects in
the same manner. With equal rapture the good rider surveys the
proudest boasts of the architect, and those fair buildings with
which some unknown name hath adorned the rich cloathing town; where
heaps of bricks are piled up as a kind of monument to show that
heaps of money have been piled there before.
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