Note 59 — English Authors on Gardening. (continued 2)

The benevolent mind of the marquis shines even in his concluding chapter; for he there wishes "to bring us back to a true taste for beautiful nature—to more humane and salutary regulations of the country—to produce the moral landscapes which delight the mind. His view of the good mother, seeing her children playing round her at their cottage, near the common, thus "endearing her home, and making even the air she breathed more delightful to her, make these sort of commons, to me, the most delightful of English gardens. The dwellings of the happy and peaceful husbandmen would soon rise up in the midst of compact farms. Can there exist a more delightful habitation for man, than a neat farm-house in the centre of a pleasing landscape? There avoiding disease and lassitude, useless expence, the waste of land in large and dismal parks, and above all, by preventing misery, and promoting happiness, we shall indeed have gained the prize of having united the agreeable with the useful. Perhaps, when every folly is exhausted, there will come a time, in which men will be so far enlightened as to prefer the real pleasures of nature to vanity and chimera."