30 NATURE IN ENGLAND. 



memory. One seems to have youthfu w,4sociations 

 with every field and hill-top he looks upon. The 

 complete humanization of nature has taken place. 

 The soil has been mixed with human thought and 

 substance. These fields have been alternately Celt, 

 Roman, British, Norman, Saxon ; they have moved 

 and walked and talked and loved and suffered ; hence 

 one feels kindred to them and at home among them. 

 The mother-land, indeed. Every foot of its soil has 

 given birth to a human being and growu tender and 

 conscious with time. 



England is like a seat by the chimney-corner, and 

 is as redolent of human occupancy and domesticity. 

 It has the island coziness and unity, and the island 

 simplicity as opposed to the continental diversity of 

 forms. It is all one neighborhood ; a friendly and 

 familiar air is over all. It satisfies to the full one's 

 utmost craving for the home-like and for the fruits 

 of affectionate occupation of the soil. It does not 

 satisfy one's craving for the wild, the savage, the ab- 

 original, what our poet describes as his 



" Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Na- 

 ture's dauntlessness." 



But probably in the matter of natural scenes we 

 hunger most for that which we most do feed upon. 

 At any rate, I can conceive that one might be easily 

 contented with what the English landscape affords 

 him. 



The whole physiognomy of the land bespeaks the 

 action of slow, uniform, conservative agencies. There 



