All the scenery we have yet met
with is in excellent taste, and keeps itself within very proper bounds,--
never getting too wild and rugged to shock the sensibilities of
cultivated people, as American scenery is apt to do. On the rudest
surface of English earth, there is seen the effect of centuries of
civilization, so that you do not quite get at naked Nature anywhere. And
then every point of beauty is so well known, and has been described so
much, that one must needs look through other people's eyes, and feels as
if he were seeing a picture rather than a reality. Man has, in short,
entire possession of Nature here, and I should think young men might
sometimes yearn for a fresher draught. But an American likes it.
FURNESS ABBEY.
Yesterday, July 12th, we took a phaeton and went to Furness Abbey,--a
drive of about sixteen miles, passing along the course of the Leam to
Morecambe Bay, and through Ulverton and other villages. These villages
all look antique, and the smallest of them generally are formed of such
close, contiguous clusters of houses, and have such narrow and crooked
streets, that they give you an idea of a metropolis in miniature. The
houses along the road (of which there are not many, except in the
villages) are almost invariably old, built of stone, and covered with a
light gray plaster; generally they have a little flower-garden in front,
and, often, honeysuckles, roses, or some other sweet and pretty rustic
adornment, are flowering over the porch.
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