At this time (1784), an introduction to Mr. Palmer, who was then beginning to form his project for substituting mail-coaches for the tardy system of carrying letters then in use, gave rise to a new source of hope and exertion. Mr. Repton's active energy of character and quickness of perception, enabled him at once to see all the advantages likely to arise from the project of his new friend; and while he lent his personal exertions, and directed his best energies towards the forwarding of those projects, his sanguine disposition led him to embark the greater part of his small remaining capital, in a scheme which, by its results, has shewn that he did not miscalculate the immense benefit it was capable of bestowing upon the Government, as well as on the public. After many years, Mr. Palmer received a considerable, though scarcely adequate, pecuniary reward, in acknowledgment of his claims upon that public and that Government; but Mr. Repton, without whose assistance those plans could scarcely ever have been brought to perfection, received no recompense for his services, and the pecuniary losses which he sustained*. Thus baffled in an enterprise which had promised as much of personal advantage as of public utility, it is not surprising that his spirits, for a short time, were depressed by disappointment. But a firm, though unostentatious trust in the constant superintendence of Providence, was, at all times, a peculiar characteristic of his mind; adding a heartfelt cheerfulness to his lightest moments of mirth, and affording a bright ray of consolation in the gloomiest moments of sorrow. And in afterlife he loved to dwell, with a deep sense of gratitude, on those circumstances of his life which, at the time of their occurrence, had been most painful; but which had invariably terminated in some unforeseen advantage. Had he been successful in his mercantile transactions, or in his farming experiments, or in his mail-coach enterprise, the peculiar tendency of his genius must have remained undeveloped. The possibility of turning to advantage that natural taste for improving the beauties of scenery, which had formed one of the dearest pleasures of his rural life, suggested itself to his mind one night when anxiety had driven sleep from his pillow. This scheme, which at first seems to have entered his imagination with almost the vague uncertainty of a dream, assumed a more substantial form, when, with the return of day, he meditated upon its practicability. With his usual quickness of decision, he arose the next morning; and, with fresh energy of purpose, spent the whole of that day in writing letters to his various acquaintances, in all parts of the kingdom, explaining his intention of becoming a "Landscape Gardener;" and he lost not a moment in bending his whole mind to the acquisition of such technical knowledge as was necessary for the practical purposes of such a profession.
*[The late Sir Francis Freeling was so fully sensible of the active part which Mr. Repton had taken in this project, that, a few years since, he was anxious to obtain from his family any copy of his original plans for the conveyance of letters; considering them most valuable, as laying the foundation for the future success of that now astonishing source of revenue.]
