ABSTRACT
The fallow years of Pelham’s administration were useful to William Pitt for other things besides giving him a better insight into State affairs. Under the genial influence of wealth and leisure his character ripened and expanded. Pitt’s chief extravagance throughout life was building and the laying out of grounds. Landscape gardening was then the mode, and all who could afford it vied with one another in conveying an illusion of vast spaces, distant prospects, and grandiose scenery within the smallest compass. Pitt entered with zest into the innocent amusement. Before he had house or grounds of his own his friends allowed him to give his fancy rein on theirs, for none was thought to excel him in ‘pointing his prospects, diversifying his surface, entangling his walks, and winding his waters’; and Warburton no mean judge, gave him the palm before so expert a professional as Capability Brown, the gardener of Stowe and Hampton Court.
