58 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



to reveal ? Let me ask such a critic to ponder well 

 the sonnet of Lowell's : 



' I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away 

 The charm that nature to my childhood wore ; 

 For, with that insight, cometh, day by day, 

 A greater bliss than wonder was before : 

 The real doth not clip the poet's wings ; 

 To win the secret of a weed's plain heart 

 Reveals some clue to spiritual things, 

 And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art.' 



It will not, I think, be hard to show that in dissip- 

 ating the popular misconceptions which have grown 

 up around the question of the origin of scenery, science 

 has put in their place a series of views of nature which 

 appeal infinitely more to the imagination than anything 

 which they supplant. While in no way lessening the 

 effect of human association with landscape, science lifts 

 the veil that hides the past from us, and in every region 

 calls up a succession of visions which, by their contrast 

 with what now presents itself to the eye and by their 

 own unlooked-for marvels, rivet our attention. Scenes 

 long familiar are illumined by c a light that never was 

 on land or sea.' We view them as if an enchanter's 

 wand were waving over us, and by some strange 

 glamour were blending past and present into one. 



Let me try to illustrate these remarks by three 

 examples culled from the scenery of each of the three 

 kingdoms. First, I would transport the reader in 

 imagination to a lonely valley in the far west of the 

 county of Donegal. The morning light is sparkling 

 in diamonds from the dewdrops that cluster on the 

 bent and heather, and is throwing a rainbow sheen 



