Forests, Being More
Enclosed, Are Not At First Sight So Attractive, But They Exercise A
Spell; They Must, However, Be
Diversified with either heath or
rock, and are hardly to be considered perfect without conifers.
Even sand-hills, with their
Intricate plan, and their gulls and
rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert.
The house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea.
A great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighbourhood;
its sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the
distance of one notable object from another; and a lively burn
gives us, in the space of a few yards, a greater variety of
promontory and islet, of cascade, shallow goil, and boiling pool,
with answerable changes both of song and colour, than a navigable
stream in many hundred miles. The fish, too, make a more
considerable feature of the brookside, and the trout plumping in
the shadow takes the ear. A stream should, besides, be narrow
enough to cross, or the burn hard by a bridge, or we are at once
shut out of Eden. The quantity of water need be of no concern, for
the mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a Niagara Fall of thirty
inches. Let us approve the singer of
'Shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.'
If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard
with a heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small
havens and dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a
first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water.
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