No. I have remarked often
that the most unimaginative people, who can see no beauty in a
cultivated English field or in the features of a new-born babe, are
the loudest ravers about glorious sunsets and Alpine panoramas; just
as the man with no music in his soul, to whom a fugue of Sebastian
Bach, or one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, means nothing, and
is nothing thinks a monster concert of drums and trumpets uncommonly
fine.'
This is certainly a sufficiently one-sided diatribe. Still it is
one-sided: and we have heard so much of the other side of late, that
it may be worth while to give this side also a fair and patient
hearing.
At least he who writes wishes that it may have a fair hearing. He
has a sort of sympathy with Lord Macaulay's traveller of a hundred
and fifty years since, who amid the 'horrible desolation' of the
Scotch highlands, sighs for 'the true mountain scenery of Richmond-
hill.' The most beautiful landscape he has ever seen, or cares to
see, is the vale of Thames from Taplow or from Cliefden, looking down
towards Windsor, and up toward Reading; to him Bramshill, looking out
far and wide over the rich lowland from its eyrie of dark pines, or
Littlecote nestling between deer-spotted upland and rich water-
meadow, is a finer sight than any robber castle of the Rhine.
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