MOUNTAINS. 117 



of the whole country. When they walked, it was 

 in parks or gardens, or in the field-paths and 

 riverside meadows that surrounded their own 

 quiet native borough. Now, Er'^ id, though 

 prettily diversified, is, on the whole, a distinctly 

 flat, or, rather, little elevated country. There are 

 hill and dale, down and valley, heath and moor- 

 land, copse and common, it is true, to an extent 

 not often to be found combined in so comparatively 

 small and limited an area in any other country. 

 But in the greater part of the kingdom there are 

 no hills of any considerable height, and the few 

 exceptions, as in the case of Exmoor, Dartmoor, 

 the Peak of Derbyshire, the Yorkshire moors, and 

 the Westmoreland and Cumberland Lake District, 

 occur in what were then remote and almost un- 

 inhabited parts of the country, far removed from 

 the busy centres of urban life during the Tudor, 

 Stuart, and Hanoverian periods. On the other 

 hand, the large towns and thickly populated dis- 

 tricts of England lie, for the most part, along the 

 river valleys or in the great central upland level.' 

 Hence, to the Englishman of a hundred years ago, 

 high hills or mountains were very unfamiliar and 

 almost uncanny objects. He knew nothing tibout 

 them, he had never seen them, and so, of course, 

 had not contracted a personal taste for them as 

 elements in scenery ; and when he came across 

 them, he was mostly concerned with the momen- 



