HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 6i 



landscape are so beautiful in themselves, what shall 

 we say of the scenery when Nature, turned artist, 

 sweeps across it the translucent tints of dawn or 

 sunset, or wind and cloud-fantasy ; or veil of purple 

 mist, or grey or red haze, or drift of rain-shower 

 thrown athwart tlie hills, for tlic sunbeams to try 

 their edge upon ; or any of the numberless atmo- 

 spheric changes, pure and tender, stern and imperi- 

 ous, that our humid climate has ever ready to hand ! 

 Shut in, as we in England are, with our short 

 breadths of view ("on a scale to embrace," remarks 

 George Meredith), folded, as it were, in a field- 

 sanctuary of Nature-life- -girt about with scenery 

 that is at once fair, compact, sweetly familiar and 

 companionable, yet so changefully coloured, so full 

 of surprises as the day jogs along to its evensong as 

 to hold observation on the stretch, to force attention 

 to Nature's last word, to fill the fallow-mind of 

 lonely country folk with gentle wonder, and swell 

 the "harvest of a quiet eye," is it strange that a 

 land like ours should have bred an unrivalled school 

 of Nature-readers among gardeners, painters, and 

 poets? "As regards grandeur" says Hawthorne, 

 '•' there are loftier scenes in many countries than 

 the best that England can show ; but, for the pictur- 

 esqueness of the smallest object that lies under its 

 ^--entle crloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like 

 it anywhere." ("Our Old Home," p. 78.) 



The real world of England, then, is. in the 

 Englishman's opinion, itself so fair " it wants no 

 ^--ardenine." Our school of hardeners seem to have 



