Letter from Uvedale Price, Foxley, to Sir George Beaumont, 1812 July 24 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying how much he regrets not being able to come to Ashburnham Place; explaining that he is involved in negotiations for "lands that are of great consequence to the beauty, connection, & comfort of my place" and this is preventing him from traveling; saying how much he has always liked the Earl of Ashburnham and describing his letters as being "full of the most engaging kindness & cordiality"; remembering spending time in the neighborhood of Ashburnham twenty years earlier and writing that he fears "the Genius of the bare & bald has been very busy with his scythe all round the Mansion," based on some prints he has seen; adding "The worst is that [Lancelot] Brown fixes & stamps such a character of monotony on all he does, that the two great correctors, Time, & Accident, can do little or nothing towards changing it"; discussing a possible water feature and praising the gardener James Cranston's aesthetic sense: "I am not sure that Cranston would not execute the detail better than any of them: he has a very good notion of varying the ground, & a good eye for stumps & stones, & for placing them; & could he work under your direction, & could you draw the form & outline of the water for him, I should have no fear: I should be afraid of trusting him alone"; describing some landscaping work he is doing at Foxley and saying that he wishes John Malchair were able to see it; writing "[i]t must be owned that working with the spade, pickax, wheel-barrow, carts, & cars, is desperate slow: & I have sometimes thought how finely one might dis-brownify a place, if one had a parcel of labourers who could do like the angels in Milton"; quoting four lines from Paradise Lost; mentioning a treatment he took for his gout; asking Beaumont if he would make a sketch of the front of Ashburnham Place for him, "enough to shew the lines & finished features"; saying that he regrets not being with them and particularly the opportunity to spend more time with Lady Ashburnham: "it is impossible ever to have seen her without wishing to improve one's acquaintance, & a week in the country does more than months in town."