So long as the inhabitants of a region thus solitary and beautiful
have neither many arts nor many wishes, save such as the Nature
which they know has suggested, and their own handiwork can satisfy,
so long are their presence and habitations likely to be in harmony
with the scenes around them. Nay, man's presence is almost always
needed to draw out the full meaning of Nature, to illustrate her
bounty by his glad well-being and to hint by his contrivances of
precaution at her might and terror. Wordsworth's description of the
cottages of Cumberland depicts this unconscious adaptation of man's
abode to his surroundings, with an eye which may be called at
pleasure that of painter or of poet.
"The dwelling-houses, and contiguous outhouses, are in many
instances of the colour of the native rock out of which they have
been built; but frequently the dwelling--or Fire-house, as it is
ordinarily called--has been distinguished from the barn or byre
by roughcast and whitewash, which, as the inhabitants are not
hasty in renewing it, in a few years acquires by the influence of
weather a tint at once sober and variegated. As these houses
have been, from father to son, inhabited by persons engaged in
the same occupations, yet necessarily with changes in their
circumstances, they have received without incongruity additions
and accommodations adapted to the needs of each successive
occupant, who, being for the most part proprietor,
was at liberty to follow his own fancy, so that these humble
dwellings remind the contemplative spectator of a production of
Nature, and may (using a strong expression) rather be said to
have grown than to have been erected--to have risen, by an
instinct of their own, out of the native rock--so little is there
in them of formality, such is their wildness and beauty.
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