OF a FARM

Summary

In speculation it might have been expected that the first essays of improvement should have been on a farm, to make it both advantageous and delightful; but the fact was otherwise; a small plot was appropriated to pleasure; the rest was preserved for profit only; and this may, perhaps, have been a principal cause of the vicious taste which long prevailed in gardens: it was imagined that a spot set apart from the rest should not be like them; the conceit introduced deviations from nature, which were afterwards carried to such an excess, that hardly any objects truly rural were left within the enclosure, and the view of those without was generally excluded. The first step, therefore, towards a reformation, was by opening the garden to the country, and that immediately led to assimilating them; but still the idea of a spot appropriated to pleasure only prevailed; and one of the latest improvements has been to blend the useful with the agreable; even the ornamented farm was prior in time to the more rural; and we have at last returned to simplicity by force of refinement.

The ideas of pastoral poetry seem now to be the standard of that simplicity; and a place conformable to them is deemed a farm in its utmost purity. An allusion to them evidently enters into the design of the Leasowes, where they appear so lovely as to endear the memory of their author; and justify the reputation of Mr. Shenstone, who inhabited, made, and celebrated the place; it is a perfect picture of his mind, simple, elegant, and amiable; and will always suggest a doubt, whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether, in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs. The whole is in the same taste, yet full of variety; and except in two or three trifles, every part is rural and natural. It is literally a grazing farm lying round the house; and a walk as unaffected and as unadorned as a common field path, is conducted through the several enclosures.