The treatment of nature in English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth

Front matter

Ulrich Middeldorf

PORTRAIT OF UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PROFESSOR, TO BE ON EXHIBITION SOON.

THE portrait of Profe5?sor Myra Reynolds, bea d of Nancy Foster House at the University of Chica|o since the founding of the unlversitj', which has been painted by William M. Chase and rM'en to the house bv its members from 1893 to 190S, will be on view durins: the afternoon of next Tuesday, alumni day. Several hundred Invitations have been issued for the afternoon. Miss Reynolds is painted wearing her doctor's gown and hood over a soft green dress; the deep blue of the doctor's vol vet bands, the maroon lining of the hood, the blaclf gc wn and the greens and golds of her chair malie a soft but rich harmony of color. The portrait, a li fe-size study, hangs against a red ground in the j inner reception hall of the house; the same room contains, over the fireplace, an almost equally large | portrait of Mrs. Nancy Foster, founder of -the house. Professor Reynolds came to the university at i the request of the late President Harper to hold a fellowship in English and the headship of the i house, and she has been an eminently successful c hlof jo( a self-governing community. Nancy Foster House has the distinction of being the only woman's hall at the University of Chicago which has had the same head continuously since the foundation in 185>3. j

Introduction

The general theme of the treatment of nature in literature is not a new one. Schiller's essay entitled "Ueber die Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung" (i 794), was the first attempt Introductory to state and explain the difference between the statement classical way of looking at nature and the modern way. The externality, the lack of heart, in the classical attitude towards nature, he attributed to the fact that the Greeks were in their thoughts and habits of life so a part of nature that they felt no impulse to seek her with the passionate longing of the modern poet, whose ardent and heartfelt love of nature is but the result of a mode of thought and life out of harmony with her. This essay, however inadequate as a presentation of the Greek attitude towards nature,' determined the lines on which much of succeeding study was made.

Alexander von Humboldt in his Kosmos (1845-58), in the midst of his scientific generalizations and his encyclopaedic accumulation of natural facts takes occasion to discuss the treatment of nature in poetry and landscape painting. The chapter on landscape painting is chiefly confined to such topographical, botanical, and other pictorial representations as serve to add to our knowledge of distant lands. The boundaries of the whole question are enlarged by a representation of the profound feeling for nature in Semitic and Indo-European races. There is a brief study of the mediseval feeling for nature as it appears in Dante, and finally of the treatment of nature in some prose writers of

* Humboldt was the first to attack Schiller's view. He said that after a full reading of Greek and Roman authors he found himself unable to accept Schiller's statement without many reservations. Later Biese spoke of Schiller's Essay as '"''jener bahnbrechende Aufsatz,'''' but showed that the statement of the case was inadequate because it was based on the poetry of a single period and thus failed entirely to take account of many phases of nature presented in the poetry after the brief " refiexionslose naive homerische Zeit^

V vi

INTRO D UCTJON the eighteenth century. The only English poets mentioned are Shakespeare, Thomson, and Byron, the whole subject of English poetry being disposed of in less than a page.

In Ruskin's Modern Painters (1843-60) are several most interesting chapters on Landscape in classical, mediaeval, and modern times. "Of the Pathetic Fallacy" and "The Moral of Landscape " are also suggestive though misleading studies.

Victor de Laprade's La Sentiment de la Nature (1866, 1868) contains in full the theories already suggested in the preface to his Les Symphones. In the introductory chapters he outlines his conception of the development of art. He regards architecture as essentially the expression of man's interest in religion ; sculpture of his interest in the demi-god or hero ; painting of his interest in the complex and varied life of man as man ; while the characteristic art of the present age is music with which the love of nature is closely allied, since both affect the mind indirectly through indeterminate and vaguely suggestive harmonies, and both tend by their complexity and subtlety to rouse sweet reveries, luxurious emotion, nameless longings, ineffectual aspirations, but leave the conscience and the will untouched. No one can read these critical studies of Laprade or his earlier poems without feeling his enthusiastic joy in the presence of nature. But he feared this joy and counted it a part of the concupiscence of the flesh except as it became an avenue to communion with the divine spirit. His indictment against the passion for nature in modern music, painting, poetry, fiction, science, is that the material is everywhere exalted at the expense of the spiritual. To be of value the presentation of the external world in whatever realm of art must subordinate its appeal to the senses, and emphasize its appeal to man's inner life. Laprade's work is a plea for idealism as against realism. In all his brilliant presentation of the attitude towards external nature of different races in different epochs, this point of view must be taken into account. In his rapid survey of English poetry the poets to receive closest attention are Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. In later times the most significant of the poets who gravitent antour de Lord Byron'' are Wordsworth and Shelley^ vii who, in their altitude towards nature, are respectively moralist and metaphysician. Byron's distinction is that he alone found " le juste equilibre entre V exuberance de la nature et celle du pur espritr Thomson's Seasons are of value because of good genre pictures and vivid descriptions of English sports, but the initial force in the return to nature is Burns.

Unquestionably the most important of the books that treat of nature in the realm of art is Bitst's Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuhls im Mittelalter undin der Neuzeit (1888).' The book is written with enthusiasm and is most stimulating and suggestive. The subject matter is well in hand, and so thoroughly organized that the great movements in the historical development of the love of nature are easily grasped. The plan is comprehensive, including not only poetry, but, in briefer outline, landscape painting and gardening, and, incidentally, even fiction and philosophy. The least satisfactory portion of the book is the treatment of the love of nature in English life and thought. There is some stress on the development of the English garden, but English landscape painting is not mentioned. In the casual mention of English fiction the emphasis is on Defoe. In poetry two epochs are recognized, that of Shakespeare and that of Byron. The chapter on Shakespeare is a close and valuable study. The work of Byron is estimated with justness and sympathy, as is also that of Shelley. But the study of Wordsworth as a poet of nature is singularly inadequate. His genius is considered as essentially of the pastoral-idyllic order, with now and then glimpses of an echte Liebe fur die Natur,'' and an unmistakable Pantheism. He is chiefly important as having done for England what Scott did for Scotland and Moore for Ireland and as sounding certain notes which rang again in Byron ''in verstdrkter Tonart'' Thomson is the only eighteenth century poet studied. Here again is a failure to recognize the real importance of the poet's

* Biese has two earlier important books : Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuhls bei den Griechen (1882) and Die Eniwickelkng des Naturgefiihls bei den Romern (1884). In Zeitschrift fiir vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, Neue Folge, Siebenter Band p. 31 1, is a valuable annotated summary of recent (since

1882) German studies on das antike tmd das deutsche Natiirgefiihl.

viii work. Biese acknowledges the truth of Thomson's separate pictures of nature, and his genuine love of the country, but denies his importance as a "pathfinder," saying that he but followed where Pope's Pastorals and Windsor Forest had marked out the way.

In 1887 appeared John Veitch's The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry. The first volume begins with the early romances and national epics, and takes up the chief poets down to James VI. The second volume is devoted to the modern period from Ramsay to David Gray. Most of the authors treated belong to the nineteenth century, but there are admirable brief studies of Ramsay, Thomson, Hamilton of Bangour, Bruce, Fergusson, and Burns. There is also a short but interesting chapter on the rise of landscape painting, with especial attention to its development in Scotland. Veitch's book is written out of a full knowledge and warm appreciation of Scottish poetry and of Scottish nature, and his critical dicta are usually trustworthy, though he shows, perhaps, a tendency to over- emphasize the influence of Scottish poetry on the love of nature in succeeding English poetry.

In John Campbell Shairp's Poetic Interpretation of Nature (1889) are studies of Homer, Lucretius, and Virgil; of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton ; and of Wordsworth. Two chapters are devoted to the eighteenth century. Ramsay is the poet to whom the reappearance of the feeling for natural beauty is traced. Thomson is praised for his minute faithfulness in description, and his genuine love of the country, but his tawdry diction and superficial conception of nature are heavy indictments against him. The chapter on Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Ossian, and the Ballads is interesting, but from its brevity is necessarily inadequate. The most suggestive chapter in the book is the one in which there is a classification of the ways in which poets deal with nature.' The whole subject of the treatment of nature in poetry is an attractive one to Mr. Shairp, and he fre-

^{a) They express childlike delight in the open-air world, {b) They use nature as the background or setting to human action or emotion, {c) They see nature through historic coloring, {d) They make nature sympathize with their ix quently recurs to it in his Studies in Poetry and Philosophy and Aspects of Poetry. x

In many books, also, not devoted exclusively to the treatment of nature in literature there are special studies and much running comment of a valuable sort. This is true of almost all essays on the early nineteenth century poets, and especially so of the various essays on Wordsworth. There is something to be found in Manuals of English Literature, as in Gosse's Eighteenth Century in the chapter, *' The Dawn of Naturalism," in various notes in Perry's English Literature of the Eighteenth Century, Phelps's The English Romantic Movement, and others ; also, in some histories, as in Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century ; in some philosophical studies, as in Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (''The Literary Reaction"), and in Stopford Brooke's Theology in the English Poets {passii?t); in various literary studies, as in McLaughlin's Studies in Mediceval Life and Literature ("The Mediaeval Feeling for Nature"), Vernon Lee's Euphorion ("The Outdoor Poetry"), Symonds's Essays Speculative and Suggestive ("Landscape") ("Nature Myths and Allegories"), Burroughs's Eresh Eields ("Birds and Poets") and Fischer's Drei Studien zur Englischen Litter aturgeschichte (" Uber den Einfluss der See auf die Englische Litter atur ").

The books indicated show that there is much interest in the general theme of nature as an element of art. The literary periods that have been most studied are, however, the Greek and Roman, the mediaeval, and the modern. The treatment of nature in so barren a time as the eighteenth century in England has naturally received little close attention. In my own work on this period I have endeavored to discover what indications there are that the attitude toward nature of the early nineteenth century is but the legitimate outcome of influences actively at work during the eighteenth century. This study is therefore one of origins.

I have divided my work into three parts. I have endeavored

own feelings, {e) They dwell upon the Inhuman or Infinite side of ni^ture. (/) They give description for its own sake, {g) They interpret nature by imaginative sympathy, {h) They use nature as a symbol of spirit.

X to give first a general statement of the chief characteristics that marked the treatment of nature under the dominance of the English classical poets. Then follows a detailed study of such eighteenth century poets as show some new conception of nature. The third division is made up of briefer studies of the landscape gardening, the fiction, the books of travel, and the painting of the eighteenth century, the purpose being to determine in how far the spirit found in the poetry reveals itself in other realms in which the love of nature might be expected to find expression.

Chapter I. The Treatment Of Nature In English Classical Poetry

The poetry of the English classical period falls naturally into

four subdivisions.

I. The period of inception may be reckoned as

Subdivisions beginning with Waller's first couplets in 1621 and of cl3.ssic3.1

. ^ including: the work of his followers, Denham, Dav-

period

enant, and Cowley.'

2. The period of establishment includes the work between the Restoration and 1700. Dryden is the central figure.

3. The period of culmination is a brief period covering less than the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Pope is the central figure.

4. The period of decadence extends from about 1725 to the end of the century.

Any generalizations concerning the attitude of this classical period towards nature must be based on a large number of specific instances, but in collecting and using these Purpose and specific instances certain cautions must be observed, method in • r • j. c ^

this study Chief among these is the necessity of keeping in

mind the point of view from which the study should be made. It is not the purpose to discover all that has been said about nature by the classical poets between 1623 and 1798. It is the purpose, rather, to eliminate exceptions, and to dwell on the general, obvious qualities, the typical features, of the classical . poet's conception of nature. This principle determines the relative importance of the periods noted above. Illustrations drawn from a large number of poems in the second and third periods would serve as the basis for a general statement. Illustrations from periods one and four would need to be

^Gosse: From Shakespeare to Pope.

I scrutinized, for they might be purely classical, or they might be survivals of the Elizabethan romantic age or prophecies of the modern romantic age. Cowley, for instance, belongs to the first classical period because he wrote in couplets, but his diction, his conceits, and in some respects his attitude towards nature are post Elizabethan rather than classical. Illustrations from his poems are of value, therefore, for the present purpose, only when they are in accord with the spirit afterwards found in the time of Dryden and Pope. So, too, Milton and Marvell, though coming chronologically within the first and second periods, stand in the main quite aloof from any tendencies that can be called classical, and their poetry is referred to only when it seems to illustrate the dominant classical conception. Abundant and valuable illustration of the classical conception may be drawn from the fourth period, because tendencies are nowhere more clearly shown than in the inevitable exaggerations of a time of decadence, but the legitimacy of any illustration is determined by its likeness to the dominating traits of the preceding periods. While this study is confined in the main to the poets of the period. Journals, Letters, Travels, and Essays have been sparinglv quoted w^here they serve as proof that the poetry fairly represents the spirit of the age in which it was written.

Pope called Wycherley an ''obstinate lover of the town'" and the phrase may well be taken to mark one characteristic of ing in London to a natural death out of it,^ have their true prototypes in the classical age. " When a man is tired of London he is tired of life," is Dr. Johnson's dictum. Gibbon said nature shown by general preference for city life

Attitude towards the orthodox classicists. Poems, Letters, Journals, Biographies, and Essays bear witness to the reluctance with which the men and women of this age bade farewell to the "dear, damned, distracting town. "2 Charles Lamb's lifelong devotion to Fleet Street and the Strand, and the sentiment of the cockneys who, as Hazlitt said, preferred hang-

Pope : Letters, Vol. I, p. 73. = Pope : A Farewell to London, Works, Vol. IV^ p. 481. 3 Hazlitt : On Londoners and Country People.

that when he visited the country it was to see his friends and not the trees. Boswell's only justification of a hastily expressed liking for the country was that he had ''appropriated the finest descriptions in the ancient Classicks to certain scenes there." ' But not even the classics could reconcile most people to a country life. It was dreary, monotonous, difficult. There was no society, no news. The days went yawningly by with no vivid interests, no stirring occurrences. '' No person of sense," exclaimed Mr. Mallet's sister, '' would live six miles out of London."^ To live in the country was to be buried. Lord Bathurst looked upon his sojourn in his country home as a sound nap "3 preparatory to Parliament. "If you wish to know how I live, or rather lose a life in the country," wrote Pope, " Martial will inform you in one line :

Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, caeno, quiesco."'* Pope found pure air and regular hours a physical necessity, but he often rebelled at his banishment from town delights, as did his "fond virgin" when compelled to seek wholesome country air.

" She went to plain-work, and to purling brooks. Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks, She went from Opera, Park, Assembly, Play, To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day ; To part the time 'twixt reading and bohea, To muse, and spill her solitary tea, Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon."5

Isabella in Dryden's The Wild Gallant speaks the general sentiment: "He I marry must promise me to live at London. I cannot abide to be in the country, like a wild beast in the wilderness:"^ So, too, Harriet, in The Man of Mode, counted all beyond Hyde Park a desert, and said that her love of the town

^ Boswell : Life of Dr. Johnson, Vol. Ill, p. 178 and note.

^Tope : Letters, Vol. IV, p. 449.

3 Pope : Letters, Vol. Ill, p. 346.

^Pope : Letters, Vol. I, p. 67.

5 Pope : Works, Vol. Ill, p. 226.

^Dryden : Works, Vol. II, p. 74.

was so intense as to make her hate the country even in pictures and hangings.' In Epsom Wells the apostle of "a pretty innocent country life," is the boor Clodpate, but Lucia assures him that people really live nowhere but in London, for the " insipid dull being" of country folk cannot be called life.^ It was in much the same spirit that Lady Mary Pierrepont responded to Lord Montagu's proposition that they should live at Wharnecliffe. "Very few people," she said, "that have settled entirely in the country but have grown at length weary of one another." Her preference for town life recurs in her poem, The Bride in the Country.

"By the side of a half rotten wood Melantha sat silently down, Convinced that her scheme was not good, And vexed to be absent from Town.

How simple was I to believe

Delusive, poetical dreams !

Or the flattering landscapes they give

Of meadows and murmuring streams.

Bleak mountains, and cold starving rocks,

Are the wretched result of my pains ;

The swains greater brutes than their flocks.

The nymphs as polite as the swains."'*

When Shenstone's young squire went forth to London in search of a wife the desired lady declared that she "could breathe nowhere else but in town."^ Lyttleton's fair maiden finds country life "supinely calm, and dully innocent," and affirms that

"The town, the Court, is Beauty's proper sphere."^ Young's Fulvia had a similar passion for the town.

" Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs, And larks, and nightingales, are odious things ;

' Etherege : The Man of Mode, Act 3, Sc. i; Act 5, Sc. 3. 'Shadwell : Epsom Wells, Act 2, Sc. i.

3 Montagu : Letters and Works, Vol. I, p. 72.

4 Montagu : Letters and Works. Vol II, p. 505. sShenstone: A Ballad.

^ Lyttleton : Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country.

And smoke, and dust, and noise, and crowds, delight, And to be pressed to death, transports her quite." ^

In Aaron Hill's poems we find a characteristic contest over the respective merits of city and country. Philemon exclaims, " Let rustic sports engage the lab'ring hind. And cultivated acres plough his mind ; Let him to unfrequented woods repair, And snuff, unenvy'd, his lean mountain air."

Damon endeavors to defend

" Th' unglorious preference of a country life "

by calling in evidence Cowley's retirement to the shades, but Philemon triumphantly shows that Cowley's dislike of the town was a clear case of sour grapes. In the end Damon recognizes that it is weak and unmanly to prefer the country.^ Browne's Celia explains to Chloe that country life may become endurable if one does not give herself up to *'dull landscape " but learns to think of the country as ''the town in miniature."^

Such expressions as these are typical. They indicate the general dislike for any life away from the city. And even those who loved the country, or thought they did, were far enough from caring for any but the tanrest of its possible delights. Pope's list of country pleasures, though half humorous, is nevertheless suggestive. In contrast to Mrs. M — 's devotion to *' play-houses, parks, assemblies, London," he depicts his own ''rapture" in the presence of "gardens, rookeries, fish-ponds, arbours."" When Bolingbroke "retired from the Court and glory to his country-seat and wife"^ he bravely insisted that he liked the change. "Here," he wrote from Dawley, "I shoot strong and tenacious roots. I have caught hold of the earth and neither my enemies nor my friends will find it an easy matter to

^ Young : Satire V ; On Women.

^ Aaron Hill : Dialogue between Damon and Philemon. 3 Isaac Hawkins Browne : From Celia to Chloe.

* Pope : Letters, Vol. IV, p. 476. Cf. From Soame Jenyns in the Country to the Lord Lovelace in Town.

s Pope : Letters, Vol. IV, p. 253.

transplant me again."' But we must join Pope in the laugh against such a catching hold of the earth when we learn that Bolingbroke paid j[^2oo to have his country halls painted with rakes, prongs, spades, and other insignia of husbandry in order to make it perfectly evident that he really did live on a farm.' The genuine lover of the country in the classical age expended his enthusiasm on the mild and easy pleasures of a well-kept country house easily accessible from the city. That a sane man could choose to live as Wordsworth did in the Lake District would have passed belief. In general the country was thought of but as a good place to recruit one's jaded energies, or as a refuge where disappointments might be hidden and disgrace forgotten.

According to Gay,

"Whene'er a Courtier's out of place, The country shelters his disgrace," ^

and his deserted, lovelorn Araminta felt that only the melancholy shades and croaking ravens of the country could suit her unhappy fate.^ Watts thought that none but useless souls " should " to woods retreat." ^ On the whole, the words of the city mouse to his country cousin expressed the prevailing sentiment.

" Let savage beasts lodge in a country den ; You should see towns, and manners know, and men."^

The poet might sing the charms of the country if he chose, but he was, after all, as Denham said of Virgil and Cowley, only "gilding dirt."^

The attitude towards nature in the literature of any age may be tested in two ways, by what is said, and by what is left unsaid,

'Pope: Letters, Vol. II, p. 113. = Pope: Letters, Vol. II, p. 133. 3 Gay: Fable 33, First Series. <Gay: Araminta.

5 Watts: To David Polhill. Cf. Shenstone : The Progress of Taste, 4 : 172 ; Lyttleton : To Mr. Poyntz. ^Cowley : The Country Mouse.

7 Denham : On Mr. Abraham Cowley's Death, 1. 79.

and of these the second is perhaps the more significant. Certainly in the poetry of the classical period the persistent ignoring of the grand and terrible in nature comes The grand and home to the mind as a most convincing proof of the terrible ^.j^g prevailing distaste for wild scenery. And ignored''^ when we apply the other test and find that the or disliked conspiracy of silence is broken only by expressions indicative of positive dislike of such scenes, the case becomes a strong one. This point may be clearly illustrated by a somewhat detailed study of the poetical treatment of the mountains and the sea.

Rarely in the long period between Waller and Wordsworth do we find any trace of the modern feeling towards mountains. If they are spoken of at all it is to indicate the Mountains difficulty in surmounting them or to express the general distaste for anything so savagely and untameably wild. It is interesting to note that passages expressing the most active dislike of mountains show really some close observation and a good deal of picturesque energy of phrase They were evidently the outcome of a personal experience, the unpleasantness of which demanded forcible epithets. They show that when men were compelled by the exigencies of travel to go into a mountainous region there was not wanting a perception of certain characteristic mountain qualities, but that these qualities were only those exciting repulsion and terror. In no case does a sense of the sublimity and beauty of mountains find, or even apparently seek expression. This is true in travels, fiction, biography, and letters, as well as in poetry. A few typical illustrations may be given. Howell, who went abroad twice before 1622, strikes the keynote of the travelers who came later. He distinctly objected to the "monstrous abruptness" of the "Pyereny Hills" and he found the Alps even more "high and hideous." He was obliged to admit that the Welsh mountains were but mole-hills compared to the Alps, but he thought the scale more than turned by the fact that those "huge, monstrous excrescences of nature" were entirely useless, while Eppint' and ^ James Howell: Epistolae Ho Elianae. Bk. I, Sec. I, Letters 23, 43,

Penminmaur at least furnished grass for the cattle. John Evelyn apparently regarded the Alps chiefly as an unpleasant barrier between the " sweete and delicious" gardens of France and the corresponding topiary paradises of Italy, and his final conception of them is as the place where nature swept up the rubbish of the earth to clear the Plains of Lombardy.' Addison was another of these early travelers, and he, too, found the journey over the Alps most trying. The " irregular, misshapen scenes" of a mountainous region gave him little pleasure.^ He preferred the safe monotony of plains. Both Evelyn and Addison expended all the descriptive energy they had to spare for mountains on Vesuvius, but it was, of course, its. character as a striking and curious natural phenomenon that attracted them. 3 Burnet of the Charter House, the tutor of Lady Mary Pierrepont, in his Theory of the Earth gives a theological reason for the existence of mountains. He conceives the present world as a gigantic ruin, the result of sin. Originally the earth was perfectly smooth. " It had the beauty of youth and blooming nature, fresh and fruitful, and not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture in all its body ; no rocks nor mountains, no hollow caves, nor gaping channels, but even and uniform all over. And the smoothness of the earth made the face of the heavens so too ; the air was calm and serene ; none of those tumultuary motions and conflicts of vapours, which the winds cause in ours. 'Twas suited to a golden age, and to the first innocency of nature." But as a punishment for sin the interior fluid of the earth was allowed to break through the beautiful smooth crust, and in the ensuing chaos were piled up those "wild, vast, and indigested heaps of stone and earth," those "great ruins" that we call mountains.^ In 1 7 15 Pennecuik said that the swelling hills of Tweeddale were, for the most part, green, grassy, and pleasant, but he objected to the bordering mountains as being "black, craigie, and of a melancholy aspect, with deep and horrid precipices, a wearisome and

Addison : Remarks on Italy. Geneva and the Lake. 3 Evelyn : Diary, p. 126; Addison: Remarks on Italy. ^Thomas Burnet: Theory of the Earth. Ch. on "Mountains."

NATURE IN EAGLISH CLASSICAL POETRY comfortless piece of way for travellers."' In 1756 Thomas Amory commented on the " dreadful northern fells," and called Westmoreland a "frightful country," and spoke of ''the ranges and groups of mountains horrible to behold."^ So late as 1773 Dr. Johnson said of the Highlands of Scotland: "An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care." 3 In the same year Hutchinson deprecates the "dreary vicinage of mountains and inclement skies" in the Lake District. He describes Stainmore thus: "As we proceeded Spittle presented its solitary edifice to view ; behind which Stainmore arises, whose heights feel the fury of both eastern and western storms ; . . . a dreary prospect extended to the eye ; the hills were clothed in heath, and all around a scene of barrenness and deformity. . . . All was wilderness and horrid waste over which the wearied eye travelled with anxiety. . . . The wearied mind of the traveller endeavours to evade such objects, and please itself with the fancied images of verdant plains, purling streams and happy groves."^