NATURE IN ENGLAND- 33 



than in the turf and foliage. One may see vast 

 stretches of wheat, oats, barley, beans, etc., as uni- 

 form as the surface of a lake, every stalk of grain 

 or bean the size and height of every other stalk. 

 This, of course, means good husbandry; it means 

 a mild, even-tempered nature back of it, also. 

 Then the repose of the English landscape is en- 

 hanced, rather than marred, by the part man has 

 played in it. How those old arched bridges rest 

 above the placid streams; how easily they conduct 

 the trim, perfect highways over them! Where 

 the foot finds an easy way, the eye finds the same; 

 where the body finds harmony, the mind finds har- 

 mony. Those ivy-covered walls and ruins, those 

 finished fields, those rounded hedge-rows, those 

 embowered cottages, and that gray, massive archi- 

 tecture, all contribute to the harmony and to the 

 repose of the landscape. Perhaps in no other 

 country are the grazing herds so much at ease. 

 One's first impression, on seeing British fields in 

 spring or summer, is that the cattle and sheep have 

 all broken into the meadow and have not yet been 

 discovered by the farmer; they have taken their 

 fill, and are now reposing upon the grass or dream- 

 ing under the trees. But you presently perceive 

 that it is all meadow or meadow-like; that there 

 are no wild, weedy, or barren pastures about which 

 the herds toil; but that they are in grass up to 

 their eyes everywhere. Hence their contentment; 

 hence another element of repose in the landscape. 

 The softness and humidity of the English climate 



