218. It is very fortunate that the result of these several investigations will generally be found the same. The residence which in the end is found altogether delightful, will be found to have been placed where it has committed no injury; and therefore the best way of consulting our own convenience in the end is, to consult the feelings of the spectator in the beginning.[45] Now, the first grand rule for the choice of situation is, never to build a villa where the ground is not richly productive. It is not enough that it should be capable of producing a crop of scanty oats or turnips in a fine season; it must be rich and luxuriant, and glowing with vegetative power of one kind or another.[46] For the very chiefest[47] part of the character of the edifice of pleasure is, and must be, its perfect ease, its appearance of felicitous repose. This it can never have where the nature and expression of the land near it reminds us of the necessity of labor, and where the earth is niggardly of all that constitutes its beauty and our pleasure; this it can only have where the presence of man seems the natural consequence of an ample provision for his enjoyment, not the continuous struggle of suffering existence with a rude heaven and rugged soil. There is nobility in such a struggle, but not when it is maintained by the inhabitant of the villa, in whom it is unnatural, and therefore injurious in its effect. The narrow cottage on the desolate moor, or the stalwart hospice on the crest of the Alps, each leaves an ennobling impression of energy and endurance; but the possessor of the villa should call, not upon our admiration, but upon our sympathy; and his function is to deepen the impression of the beauty and the fullness of creation, not to exhibit the majesty of man; to show, in the intercourse of earth and her children, not how her severity may be mocked by their heroism, but how her bounty may be honored in their enjoyment. [Footnote 45: For instance, one proprietor terrifies the landscape all round him, within a range of three miles, by the conspicuous position of his habitation; and is punished by finding that, from whatever quarter the wind may blow, it sends in some of his plate-glass. Another spoils a pretty bit of crag by building below it, and has two or three tons of stone dropped through his roof, the first frosty night. Another occupies the turfy slope of some soft lake promontory, and has his cook washed away by the first flood. We do not remember ever having seen a dwelling-house destroying the effect of a landscape, of which, considered merely as a habitation, we should wish to be the possessor.]