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Repton, Humphry, 1752-1818 / Observations on the theory and practice of landscape gardening: including some remarks on Grecian and Gothic architecture, collected from various manuscripts, in the possession of the different noblemen and gentlemen, for whose use they were originally written; the whole tending to establish fixed principles in the respective arts
(1803)
[Chapter VII, continued], pp. 95-98
Page 95
95 violation of good taste, I am convinced that they are, and must be distinct objects, and ought never to be brought together in the same point of view. To guard against misrepresentation, let me be allowed to say, each may fill its appropriate station in a gentleman's estate: we do not wish to banish the nectarine from our desserts, although we plant out the wall which protects it; norwould I expunge the common farm from the pleasures of the country, though I cannot encourage its motley hues, and domestic ocu- pations, to disturb the repose of park scenery. It is the union, not the existence, of beauty and profit, of laborious exertion and pleasurable recreation, against which I would interpose the influence of my art; nor let the fastidious objector condemn the effort, till he can convince the judgment, that without violation of good taste he could introduce the dairy and the pigsty (those useful appendages of rural economy) into the recesses of the drawing room, or the area of the saloon. The difficulty of uniting a park and a farm arises from this material circumstance, that the one is an object of beauty, the other of profit. The scenery of both consists of Ground, Trees, Water, and Cattle; but these are very dif- ferently arranged. And since a park is less profitable than arable land, the more we can diminish the quantity of the former, provided it still be in character with the style of the mansion, the less we shall regret the sacrifice of profit to beauty. The shape and colour of corn fields, and the straight lines of fences, are so totally at variance with all ideas of picturesque beauty, that I shall not venture to suggest any hints on the
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