8 4 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



scenery in our literature, I will cite Cowper, Thom- 

 son, and Burns. 



The retreat in the valley of the Ouse, to which 

 Cowper escaped from the noise and distractions of city- 

 life, was eminently fitted by its quiet seclusion to 

 soothe his spirit, and to fill his eye and his imagination 

 with images of rural peacefulness and gentle beauty. 

 If the choice of such a home was of infinite 

 service to the poet, it was hardly less momentous 

 in the progress of English literature. 



The scenery of that valley, around Olney and 

 Weston, is thoroughly characteristic of the southern 

 lowlands. The ground lies on limestones and clays, 

 belonging to the Oolitic series, which, though they 

 have been greatly denuded, have yielded in a general 

 equable manner to the progress of decay. They 

 possess no such differences of structure as to allow 

 one part of them to project in crag or scar above the 

 rest. They have been worn down into a gently 

 undulating plateau or plain, covered with corn-fields 

 and pastures, and dotted with occasional woods and 

 1 spinnies,' or patches of trees. Farms and villages 

 diversify the landscape, while to the north lies the 

 forest-like expanse of Yardley Chase. Through this 

 champaign the River Ouse has cut for itself a winding 

 valley, the bottom of which, quite flat and from a 

 few hundred yards to upwards of a mile in breadth, 

 lies rather more than a hundred feet below the general 

 level of the country. Along the flat alluvial plain, the 

 stream, sluggishly flowing among rushes and sedges, 

 curves in circuitous bends, often dividing so as to 

 enclose insular patches of meadow, which it entirely 



