" I WENT, for the first time in my life, some years ago, to stay at a very 

 grand and beautiful place in the country, where the grounds are said to 

 be laid out with consummate taste. For the first three or four days I 

 was perfectly enchanted; it seemed something so much better than 

 nature that I really began to wish the earth had been laid out according 

 to the latest principles of improvement. ... In three days' time I 

 was tired to death : a thistle^ a nettle, a heap of dead bushes — anything 

 that wore the appearance of accident and want of intention — ^was quite 

 a relief. I used to escape from the made grounds, and walk upon an 

 adjacent goose-common, where the cart-ruts, gravel-pits, bumps, irregu- 

 larities, coarse ungentlemanlike grass, and all the varieties produced by 

 n^lect, were a thousand times more gratifying than the monotony of 

 beauties the result of design, and crowded into narrow confines." 



Sydney Smith. 



