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Salon Images

Salon Images

A cedar parlor.

A formal living room.

These images, as well as the poem below, "The Living Room", are credited to Henry Repton's Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816)

A Modern Living Room

No more the Cedar Parlour’s formal gloom
With dulness chills, ‘tis now the Living Room;
Where Guests, to whim, or taste, or fancy true,
Scatter’d in groups, their different plans pursue.
Here Politicians eagerly relate
The last day’s news, or the last night’s debate.
……
With discords twanging from the half-tun’d harp,
Make dulness cheerful, changing flat to sharp.
Here, ‘midst exotic plants, the curious maid
Of Greek and Latin seems no more afraid.
There lounging Beaux and Belles enjoying their folly,
Nor less enjoying learned melancholy.
Silent midst crowds the Doctor here looks big,
Wrap’d in his own importance and his wig.