8o LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



to be treated would require a course of lectures. 

 I can only attempt to illustrate it by selecting a few 

 instances from our poets where the relation that I wish 

 to establish seems to be most readily perceptible. 



I. The Lowlands of Britain. If a line be drawn 

 across England from the mouth of the Humber through 

 the Midlands to the Bristol Channel, it will divide the 

 country into two sharply contrasted portions. To the 

 west of it, the older, harder, and therefore more durable 

 rocks rise into the high grounds of Wales, the Pennine 

 Chain, and the Lakes. To the east of it, on the other 

 hand, the younger, softer, and consequently more de- 

 structible, formations occupy the whole of the territory, 

 giving a characteristic lowland topography to the dis- 

 tricts that have been longest settled and cultivated, 

 which include the greater portion of what is most 

 familiar and typical in English landscape. 



The eastern Lowlands of England consist of a suc- 

 cession of gently undulating ridges, separated from each 

 other by winding vales or plains. These features have 

 a general trend across the country from south-west or 

 west to north-east or east — a direction determined by 

 the successive outcrops of the different formations. But 

 the denudation of the surface has been so great and 

 so unequal that, despite the continuity and parallelism 

 of the formations, their outcrops have been worn into 

 endless diversities of topographical detail, producing 

 abundant variety among the gentle profiles of the land- 

 scapes. 



As examples of the ridges, we may take the North 

 and South Downs, and the chain of heights that stretches 



