This Is The True
Pleasure Of Your 'rural Voluptuary,' - Not To Remain Awe-Stricken
Before A Mount Chimborazo; Not
To sit deafened over the big drum in
the orchestra, but day by day to teach himself some new beauty
- To
experience some new vague and tranquil sensation that has before
evaded him. It is not the people who 'have pined and hungered
after nature many a year, in the great city pent,' as Coleridge
said in the poem that made Charles Lamb so much ashamed of himself;
it is not those who make the greatest progress in this intimacy
with her, or who are most quick to see and have the greatest gusto
to enjoy. In this, as in everything else, it is minute knowledge
and long-continued loving industry that make the true dilettante.
A man must have thought much over scenery before he begins fully to
enjoy it. It is no youngling enthusiasm on hilltops that can
possess itself of the last essence of beauty. Probably most
people's heads are growing bare before they can see all in a
landscape that they have the capability of seeing; and, even then,
it will be only for one little moment of consummation before the
faculties are again on the decline, and they that look out of the
windows begin to be darkened and restrained in sight. Thus the
study of nature should be carried forward thoroughly and with
system. Every gratification should be rolled long under the
tongue, and we should be always eager to analyse and compare, in
order that we may be able to give some plausible reason for our
admirations.
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