NATURE IN ENGLAND 27 



England is not a country of granite and marble, 

 but of chalk, marl, and clay. The old Plutonic 

 gods do not assert themselves; they are buried and 

 turned to dust, and the more modern humanistic 

 divinities bear sway. The land is a green cemetery 

 of extinct rude forces. Where the highway or the 

 railway gashed the hills deeply, I could seldom tell 

 where the soil ended and the rock began, as they 

 gradually assimilated, blended, and became one. 



And this is the key to nature in England: 'tis 

 granite grown ripe and mellow and issuing in grass 

 and verdure; 'tis aboriginal force and fecundity 

 become docile and equable and mounting toward 

 higher forms, the harsh, bitter rind of the earth 

 grown sweet and edible. There is such body and 

 substance in the color and presence of things that 

 one thinks the very roots of the grass must go 

 deeper than usual. The crude, the raw, the dis- 

 cordant, where are they 1 It seems a comparatively 

 short and easy step from nature to the canvas or to 

 the poem in this cozy land. Nothing need be 

 added; the idealization has already taken place. 

 The Old World is deeply covered with a kind of 

 human leaf-mould, while the New is for the most 

 part yet raw, undigested hard-pan. This is why 

 these scenes haunt one like a memory. One seems 

 to have youthful associations with every field and 

 hilltop 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, Nor- 



