NATURE IN ENGLAND. 35 



The repose and equipoise of nature of which I 

 have spoken appears in the fields of grain no less 

 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 enhanced, 

 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 harmony. Those ivy- 

 covered walls and ruins, those finished fields, those 

 rounded hedge-rows, those embowered cottages, and 

 that gray, massive architecture, 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 in to the meadow and have not yet 

 been discovered by the farmer ; they have taken 

 their fill, and are now reposing upon the grass or 

 dreaming under the trees. But you presently per- 

 ceive that it is all meadow or meadow-like ; that thero 

 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. 



