“I cannot agree this practice of first removing nature, then putting back the landscape in a ‘natural’ stile. It seems the work of both folly and conceit,” said Elizabeth as they returned to the carriage after viewing the house and grounds, “as well as giving insult to the hands of Nature.”

“Mr. Brown, and here Mr. Repton, certainly have a gift for creating the sublime. However, with such an example of natural beauty as is here on this island, he—and Mr. Simeon’s purse—might have been spared their trouble to little, if any, disadvantage.”

“I would venture further, Mr. Darcy. In the present instance, the very definition of ‘success’ would indicate that a viewer would be unable to distinguish the hand of the improver from a similar scene arising naturally and spontaneously through the workings of time and benign neglect, as advocated by Mr. Price. The only way to secure the accolades due such extraordinary effort is industriously to circulate the history of the grounds as being the work of Mr. Repton, which—as we both know—is but an indirect and indelicate boast of the costs of the whole-sale destruction of the natural, in order to reconstruct the picturesque ‘as from nature.’ Such an effort seems absurd.”

“What did you think of Pemberley when you first saw it, on that day with the Gardiners? Did you believe it a scene of ‘destruction?’”

“Of course not, Mr. Darcy. My opinion to-day coincides with my first impressions on that day—that I had never seen any place where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. However, I am no proficient in the matter of landscape gardening, and did not know then, whether such beauty had been the result of a serendipitous placement of the house and park, or whether it had been done by removing the whole of the village, rearranging it, and setting it back down, only for the purpose of making a change to the original situation.”

“Well asserted, Lizzy!” smiled Mr. Darcy. “This discussion gives me a great inclination to re-employ all of the gardeners at Pemberley in the fields, and leave the house and grounds to the ‘gentle hands of time.’ We will have realised a significant savings from sparing the gardeners the work, and—in some ten or twenty years—we will not be able to see the house from so far away as the lake!”

“Check-mate, Mr. Darcy,” rejoined Elizabeth laughing; “you well know that I could never approve such a plan, and hence have shewn me the errors of my thinking quite ably, thank you.”