40 ENGLISH WOODS: A CONTRAST. 



that ? The wild and the savage flee away. The rocks 

 pull the green turf over them like coverlids ; the hills 

 are plump with vegetable mould, and when they bend 

 this way or that, their sides are wrinkled and dimpled 

 like the forms of fatted sheep. And fatted they are; 

 not merely by the care of man, but by the elements 

 themselves; the sky rains fertility upon them; there 

 is no wear and tear as with our alternately flooded, 

 parched, and frozen hill-tops ; the soil accumulates, 

 the mould deepens; the matted turf binds it and 

 yearly adds to it. 



All this is not simply because man is or has been 

 so potent in the landscape (this is but half the truth), 

 but because the very mood and humor of Nature her- 

 self is domestic and human. She seems to have 

 grown up with man and taken on his look and ways. 

 Her spirit is that of the full, placid stream that you 

 may lead through your garden or conduct by your 

 doorstep without other danger than a wet sill or a 

 soaked flower-plot, at rare intervals. It is the opulent 

 nature of the southern seas, brought by the Gulf 

 Stream, and reproduced and perpetuated here under 

 these cool northern skies, the fangs and the poison 

 taken out ; full, but no longer feverish ; lusty, but no 

 longer lewd. 



Yet there is a certain beauty of nature to be had 

 in much fuller measure in our own country than in 

 England, the beauty of the wild, the aboriginal, 

 the beauty of primitive forests, the beauty of lichen- 

 covered rocks and ledges. The lichen is one of the 



