Fascinating to think of the ornamental hermit craze as being not just (literal) garden-variety romanticism but on a deeper level a way to respect and preserve occult knowledge and tradition:

Other researchers, like Anna Korndorf, suggest that building hermitages and staffing them with ornamental hermits was a way to push back against the abandonment of “secret knowledge” maintained by members of rejected hermetic traditions.

(From this article about ornamental hermits. Black Phillip voice: “Would you like to live ornamentally?”)