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FRAGMENT XXIII.
OF VARIETY.
IN delivering my opinion in a former work, I used an expres-
sion respecting the humility of experience, which was ridiculed
by some critics, but which I now repeat after a lapse of many
years. "I do not presume to establish principles in taste, but to
" record my practice, and the motives which led to it. This I do
" with all the humility acquired by experience." When I look back
on the many hundred places I have visited, and plans I have
formed, I can find no two which exactly resembled each other;
but where some small similitude might perhaps be traced, there
ever existed such variety in the circumstances, the wishes, or
the characters of the possessors, that it was impossible to class
them in such a manner as might lead to general use. Indeed, if
we consider that of the many thousand houses which have been
built, no one has ever been exactly copied in the plans for any
future house; but, on the contrary, that every plan is either
taken from designs which have never been executed, or from the
remains of ancient buildings, of whose uses we are almost igno-
rant: we may ask, Cui bono? to what good purpose are plans
and designs and works of art ever published? The only answer