8 NATURE IN ENGLAND. 



a placid little river, amid such quiet country scenes, 

 is a novel experience. |But this is Britain: a little 

 island, with little lakes, little rivers, quiet, bosky 

 fields, but mighty interests and power that reach 

 round the world. \ I was conscious that the same 

 scene at home would have been less pleasing. It 

 would not have been so compact and tidy. There 

 would not have been a garden of ships and a garden 

 of turnips side by side ; hay-makers and ship-builders 

 in adjoining fields; milch-cows and iron steamers 

 seeking the water within sight of each other. We 

 leave wide margins and ragged edges in this country, 

 and both man and nature sprawl about at greater 

 lengths than in the Old World. 



For the rest I was perhaps least prepared for the 

 utter tranquillity, and shall I say domesticity, of the 

 mountains. At a distance they appear to be covered 

 with a tender green mould that one could brush away 

 with his hand. On nearer approach it is seen to be 

 grass. They look nearly as rural and pastoral as the 

 fields. Goat Fell is steep and stony, but even it 

 does not have a wild and barren look. At home, 

 one thinks of a mountain as either a vast pile of bar- 

 ren, frowning rocks and precipices, or else a steep 

 acclivity covered with a tangle of primitive forest 

 timber. But here, the mountains are high, grassy 

 sheep-walks, smooth, treeless, rounded, and as green 

 as if dipped in a fountain of perpetual spring. I did 

 not wish my Catskills any different ; but I wondered 

 what would need to be done to them to make them 



