The Fountain Of Juventus Does Not Play Steadily In
These Parts; But There It Plays, And Possibly Nowhere Else.
CHAPTER XIII - ROADS - 1873
No amateur will deny that he can find more pleasure in a single
drawing, over which he can sit a whole quiet forenoon, and so
gradually study himself into humour with the artist, than he can
ever extract from the dazzle and accumulation of incongruous
impressions that send him, weary and stupefied, out of some famous
picture-gallery. But what is thus admitted with regard to art is
not extended to the (so-called) natural beauties no amount of
excess in sublime mountain outline or the graces of cultivated
lowland can do anything, it is supposed, to weaken or degrade the
palate. We are not at all sure, however, that moderation, and a
regimen tolerably austere, even in scenery, are not healthful and
strengthening to the taste; and that the best school for a lover of
nature is not to the found in one of those countries where there is
no stage effect - nothing salient or sudden, - but a quiet spirit of
orderly and harmonious beauty pervades all the details, so that we
can patiently attend to each of the little touches that strike in
us, all of them together, the subdued note of the landscape. It is
in scenery such as this that we find ourselves in the right temper
to seek out small sequestered loveliness. The constant recurrence
of similar combinations of colour and outline gradually forces upon
us a sense of how the harmony has been built up, and we become
familiar with something of nature's mannerism.
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