Taste and utility

Those who delight in depreciating the present by comparisons with former times, may, perhaps, observe a decline of taste in many of the polite arts; but surely in architecture and gardening, the present era furnishes more examples of Attention to comfort and convenience than are to be found in the plans of Palladio, Vitruvius, or Le Notre, who, in the display of useless symmetry, often forgot the requisites of habitation. The leading feature in the good taste of modern times, is the just sense of GENERAL UTILITY.