ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY (1801–85)
Extract from The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, ed. Edwin Hodder (1886)

      Summer 1883
What a grand, memorable, and beautiful place it is! It recalls to my memory the society, political, intellectual, convivial, and genial, of sixty years ago. It recalls the memory of some estimable and some non-estimable persons—all dead and gone; perhaps at the grand garden party of yesterday not one besides myself had ever seen this Palace in its prime, under the famous proprietors, Lord and Lady Holland; and soon, no doubt, the glorious mansion itself, and the noble, ancient park around it, will be consigned to the erection of some thousand edifices; to the domain of brick and mortar. The price it would fetch for building purposes, perhaps half-a-million, will overcome reverence for antiquity, sense of beauty, and all ennobling contemplations. It brought a feeling of sadness over me. But such is progress! And, perhaps, the Prose of the Future may be equal, if not superior, to the Poetry of the Past.