Villas in the Landscape
An issue that Wordsworth felt very strongly about was building in the Lake District, arguing that new properties should be discreet and in harmony with nature.
John Cladius Loudon took the opposite approach on a tour made May-July 1831, as he recorded in his work In Search of English Gardens. He felt that nature exists for human use, and that the Lake District is “admirably suited for the summer residences of persons engaged in business in town... we hope to see the hills thickly studded with villas and cottages from their bases to their summits.”
He went further, arguing that people actually improve nature: “Nature made the lakes and the surrounding rocks and mountains in all their rudeness, as she made the crab and the sloe; from these man has produced the golden pippin and the greengage-plum; and why should not the same spirit of improvement be directed towards those parts of Cumberland and Westmorland which, relatively to man, are as wild as the crab or the sloe?”