
Linguistic appropriation in effect operated tautologically: the landscape improvers and picturesque theorists sought not only to shape and define nature according to certain aesthetic protocols, but also to encourage an aesthetico-political order, an idea of what nature and nation should be, which could become a standard for judging what is and is not 'natural' in these two spheres. [...]we have, for example, Knight's critique of Repton's practice of levelling trees and shrubs in the creation of 'never-ending sheets of vapid lawn'--an aesthetic commentary that also raises the spectre of political levelling--and Repton's rejoinder, outlined in a 1794 letter to Price, that the system of picturesque embellishment fosters an ungovernable wildness unsuitable to the ideals of a constitutional monarchy, each playing on the idea (and preyingon the fear) that extreme policies in aesthetic/environmental practice reflect and encourage instability in the political realm as well.