I am aware that, in the prevailing rage for agriculture, it is unpopular to assert, that a farm and a park may not be united; but, after various efforts to blend the two, without violation of good taste, I am convinced that they are, and must be distinct objects, and ought never to be brought together in the same point of view. To guard against misrepresentation, let me be allowed to say, each may fill its appropriate station in a gentleman's estate: we do not wish to banish the nectarine from our desserts, although we plant out the wall which protects it; nor would I expunge the common farm from the pleasures of the country, though I cannot encourage its motley hues and domestic occupations to disturb the repose of park scenery. It is the union, not the existence, of beauty and profit, of laborious exertion and pleasurable recreation, against which I would interpose the influence of my art; nor let the fastidious objector condemn the effort, till he can convince the judgment that, without violation of good taste, he could introduce the dairy and the pig-sty (those useful appendages of rural economy) into the recesses of the drawing-room, or the area of the saloon.
