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. 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.
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