3 54- ^^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lar neatness would naturally set iip a new feeling. Straight rows of 

 vines or olives, trim meadows, well-kept hedges, level fields of corn, 

 excite the farmer's admiration. This is about the level ordinarily 

 reached (though often surpassed) by the " Georgics." In the " Iliad," 

 when a place is mentioned with any allusion to scenery, it is generally 

 because it is "fertile," "horse-feeding," or " rich in corn" ; with Vir- 

 gil, it is the careful tillage of Italian peasants that provokes attention. 

 But wild hills and rocks are mere barren, good-for-nothing wastes to 

 the agricultural eye. A few days before writing this paper I was 

 wandei'ing among the beautiful wooded heights of the Maurettes near 

 Hy6res, when I came across a party of peasants taking their lunch on 

 a little plateau outside their cottage. Wishing to apologize for my 

 intrusion, I said a few words about the singularly lovely view which 

 their house commanded across the mountains and the sea. " Ah, yes," 

 said one of the peasants in his Provenyal patois, " there isn't much to 

 see this way except the forest ; but down thei'e," pointing behind him 

 in the opposite direction, toward the great cabbage-garden which 

 covers the alluvial plain of Hyeres " down there one sees a magnifi- 

 cent country." The one view was like a bit of miniature Switzerland ; 

 the other, like a huge market-garden, as flat as this page. 



Even in our own time and place, among our own race, one may see 

 a similar aesthetic level with farmers and laborers. " So you're going 

 to Devonshire," said a Lincolnshire yeoman to his minister (from whom 

 I have the story) ; "you'll find it a poor sort of country after this. 

 You'll never see a field of corn like ours down there, I take it." "Your 

 country, sir," says a distinguished American visitor in England, " is 

 very beautiful. In many parts you may go for miles together, and 

 never see a tree except in a hedge. Nothing more beautiful can be 

 conceived." (I take the words down from tlie report of an "inter- 

 viewer.") To the farmer, hills like those of Devonshire were mere 

 obstructions to ploughing : in the eyes of the practical American, 

 trees were simply objects to be stumped and annihilated in the interest 

 of good farming. 



So long as communications are difficult and roads bad, this agricul- 

 tural aspect of natural beauty will remain uppermost. It is difficult 

 to appreciate scenery in the midst of practical discomforts. The Alps 

 were naturally mere barriers of snow to Hannibal and Csesar. The 

 Scotch Highlands were less beautiful to Lowlanders when they were 

 inhabited by hostile clansmen with a taste for cattle-lifting. Even in 

 the last century, one is struck by the many serious discomforts which 

 Johnson suffered in going to the Hebrides or traveling through Wales. 

 Telford's Holyhead road must have done much to quicken the sesthetic 

 sensibilities of the eighteenth century in England. I have myself 

 noted in Jamaica how much the appreciation of really beautiful scenery 

 is spoiled by the discomforts of the climate and the difficulties of trans- 

 port. In such circumstances, an aesthetic feeling for scenery can hardly 



