I have, on several occasions, ventured to condemn as false taste, that fatal rage for destroying villages, or depopulating a country, under the idea of its being necessary to the importance of a mansion: from the same Red Book the following extract is taken:- "As a number of labourers constitutes one of the requisites of grandeur, comfortable habitations for its poor dependants ought to be provided. It is no more necessary that these habitations should be seen immediately near the palace, than that their inhabitants should dine at the same table; but if their humble dwellings can be made a subordinate part of the general scenery, they will, so far from disgracing it, add to the dignity that wealth can derive from the exercise of benevolence. Under such impressions, and with such sentiments, I am peculiarly happy in being called upon to mark a spot for new cottages, instead of those which it is necessary to remove, not absolutely because they are too near the house, for that is hardly the case with those cottages in the dell, but because, the turnpike-road being removed, there will be no access for the inhabitants but through a part of the park, which cannot then be private. I must advise, however, that some one or more of the houses in this dell be left, and inhabited either as a keeper's house, a dairy, or a menagerie, that the occasional smoke from the chimneys may animate the scene. The picturesque and pleasing effect of smoke ascending, when relieved by a dark hanging wood in the deep recess of a beautiful glen like this, is a circumstance by no means to be neglected.
