Among the most painful circumstances attending the professor's life, is the time and contrivance wasted to produce plans, although highly approved, yet, from vanity, from indecision, or from the fickleness of human nature, not unfrequently thrown aside, and plans more expensive, but less useful or ornamental, adopted in their stead. About fifteen years after I had given plans for making a house and grounds perfectly comfortable, at an expense estimated at four thousand pounds, I had the mortification to find, that fifteen thousand had been expended; and the proprietor told me that he would gladly add five thousand more to make it as I had originally proposed.. "Video meliora, proboque, Deteriora sequor." ["I see the right, and I approve it too; Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue."] Tate's Trans.
