'
Pleasant are those hidden waterways: but yet are they the more
pleasant because the hand of man has not interfered with them?
It is a question, and one which the older one grows the less one is
inclined to answer in the affirmative. The older one grows, the more
there grows on one the sense of waste and incompleteness in all
scenery where man has not fulfilled the commission of Eden, 'to dress
it and to keep it;' and with that, a sense of loneliness which makes
one long for home, and cultivation, and the speech of fellow men.
Surely the influence of mountain scenery is exaggerated now-a-days.
In spite of the reverend name of Wordsworth (whose poetry, be it
remembered, too often wants that element of hardihood and manliness
which is supposed to be the birthright of mountaineers), one cannot
help, as a lowlander, hoping that there is a little truth in the
threnodes of a certain peevish friend who literally hates a mountain,
and justifies his hatred in this fashion:-
'I do hate mountains. I would not live among them for ten thousand a
year.
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