ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE 



named, are suggested, illustrated and 

 demonstrated to us by what we see in the 

 external world out-of-doors. But most of 

 all the landscape becomes a necessary con- 

 dition of our human life when we corne 

 into contact with it through our aesthetic 

 and spiritual faculties. 



It is at this point that landscape be- 

 comes indispensable. Robinson Crusoe lived 

 a very human sort of life with the outdoor 

 world and without society. Jeremiah in 

 the pit had human society, but no land- 

 scape. Who would not prefer to be Crusoe? 



What notion of beauty could any one 

 have who had never seen the landscape? 

 Of her first introduction to society Miranda 

 was able to exclaim, "How beauteous man- 

 kind is!" But if all her life she had been 

 locked into a dungeon or a palace what 

 might she have cried on her first sight of 

 the beautiful world? 



In this life we are taught chiefly by 

 three great agencies — ^by other men, by 

 the printed page, and by the landscape; 

 that is, by what we see of the natural world. 

 Of these three Adam at first had only the 

 landscape, showing this to be the most 

 primitive and elementary of all. And it is 



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