36 FKESH FIELDS 



catliedral-like aisles, — where else can one find 

 beauty like that? The wild and the savage flee 

 away. The rocks pull the green turf over them 

 like coverlids; the hills are plump with vegetable 

 mould, and when they bend this way or that, their 

 sides are wrinkled and dimpled like the forms of 

 fatted sheep. And fatted they are; not merely by 

 the care of man, but by the elements themselves; 

 the sky rains fertility upon them; there is no wear 

 and tear as with our alternately flooded, parched, 

 and frozen hilltops; the soil accumulates, the mould 

 deepens; the matted turf binds it and yearly adds 

 to it. 



All this is not simply because man is or has 

 been so potent in the landscape (this is but half the 

 truth), but because the very mood and humor of 

 Nature herself is domestic and human. She seems 

 to have grown up with man and taken on his look 

 and ways. Her spirit is that of the full, placid 

 stream that you may lead through your garden or 

 conduct by your doorstep without other danger than 

 a wet siU or a soaked flower-plot, at rare intervals. 

 It is the opulent nature of the southern seas, 

 brought by the Gulf Stream, and reproduced and 

 perpetuated here under these cool northern skies, 

 the fangs and the poison taken out; full, but no 

 longer feverish; lusty, but no longer lewd. 



Yet there is a certain beauty of nature to be had 

 in much fuller measure in our own country than in 

 England, — the beauty of the wild, the aboriginal, 

 — the beauty of primitive forests, — the beauty of 



