"It is benignly ordained that green fields, clear blue skies,
running streams of pure water, rich groves and woods, orchards, and
all the ordinary varieties of rural nature should find an easy way
to the affections of all men. But a taste beyond this, however
desirable it may be that every one should possess it, is not to be
implanted at once; it must be gradually developed both in nations
and individuals. Rocks and mountains, torrents and wide-spread waters,
and all those features of nature which go to the composition of such
scenes as this part of England is distinguished for, cannot, in
their finer relations to the human mind, be comprehended, or even
very imperfectly conceived, without processes of culture or
opportunities of observation in some degree habitual. In the eye of
thousands, and tens of thousands, a rich meadow, with fat cattle
grazing upon it, or the sight of what they would call a heavy crop
of corn, is worth all that the Alps and Pyrenees in their utmost
grandeur and beauty could show to them; and it is noticeable what
trifling conventional prepossessions will, in common minds, not only
preclude pleasure from the sight of natural beauty, but will even
turn it into an object of disgust.
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