THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 



some effect upon it ; and it may be curious 

 and profitable, too, to make the analysis. 



Does landscape have an appreciable 

 influence on literature? We may say con- 

 fidently that it does. What is pastoral 

 poetry, for example, except that in which 

 the rural landscape has yielded the flavor, 

 if not the substance? But the demonstra- 

 tion is much more general, for as literature 

 takes its form and color from all the 

 matericds out of which it is wrought, and 

 as landscape is necessarily among these 

 materials, so must it necessarily have its 

 due and proportionate part in the result. 



Let us consider literature in the mak- 

 ing. A good author, of novels, let us say, 

 sees his characters living and acting before 

 him. The scenes which he depicts are 

 vividly seen before his own eyes. The in- 

 fluence of every part of the environment 

 on each important character must be duly 

 considered. Does it make any difference, 

 therefore, whether Algernon woos Eloise 

 on the rolling prairies of Iowa or amid the 

 snowy mountains of the Engadine? Will 

 John himself, being one and the same man, 

 propose to Mary herself, she being once 

 and always the same girl, amid the wintry 



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