KDDENESS AND SIMPLICITY. 269 



Eude people are not admirers of homely landscape. They 

 are unaffected by scenery, unless it is either grand or 

 elegant. But the man of educated mind the painter or 

 the poet sees a charm in rudeness surpassing the most 

 admired scenes which are merely beautiful. He prefers 

 Nature in her own spontaneous dress. He loves that 

 simplicity which would be spoiled by any attempt to 

 improve or embellish it. 



As we advance from childhood to maturity, and grow 

 in knowledge and culture, the scenes of nature become 

 full of associations, some pastoral or romantic, some grand 

 or sublime, others rude, weird, or desolate. The differ- 

 ent sentiments awakened by them enter into our ideas 

 of the picturesque, from which that of mere elegance is 

 generally excluded. That there is a specific charm in 

 rudeness is acknowledged by all writers on art, and some 

 have even regarded it as essential to the picturesque. 

 But they have generally believed it confined to pictures 

 of scenes and objects, and that the sentiment cannot be 

 awakened by the things represented. A picture of an old 

 building, for example, they would say, is admired when 

 the building itself would attract no attention and excite 

 no emotion. It may be said, however, that there are 

 more who can understand the expression of a picturesque 

 object in a painting than in reality, because the imagina- 

 tion of the spectator is guided and assisted by the painter 

 in one case, and not in the other. But the painter, or any 

 one who views nature with a painter's eye, would be as 

 much affected by the natural scene as by the picture that 

 represents it. 



I am persuaded that a highly agreeable and specific 

 emotion is awakened by the sight of rudeness in land- 

 scape, that deserves a place in the category of agreeable 

 sensations derived from nature. Rudeness of scenery 

 corresponds with simplicity of life. It is the opposite of 



