第22章 THE LESSON OF LANDSCAPE(1)

The landscape, like our literature, is apt to grow and to get itself formed under too luxurious ideals.This is the evil work of that LITTLE MORE which makes its insensible but persistent additions to styles, to the arts, to the ornaments of life--to nature, when unluckily man becomes too explicitly conscious of her beauty, and too deliberate in his arrangement of it.The landscape has need of moderation, of that fast-disappearing grace of unconsciousness, and, in short, of a return towards the ascetic temper.The English way of landowning, above all, has made for luxury.Naturally the country is fat.The trees are thick and round--a world of leaves; the hills are round; the forms are all blunt; and the grass is so deep as to have almost the effect of snow in smoothing off all points and curving away all abruptness.England is almost as blunt as a machine- made moulding or a piece of Early-Victorian cast-iron work.And on all this we have, of set purpose, improved by our invention of the country park.There all is curves and masses.A little more is added to the greenness and the softness of the forest glade, and for increase of ornament the fat land is devoted to idleness.Not a tree that is not impenetrable, inarticulate.Thick soil below and thick growth above cover up all the bones of the land, which in more delicate countries show brows and hollows resembling those of a fine face after mental experience.By a very intelligible paradox, it is only in a landscape made up for beauty that beauty is so ill achieved.Much beauty there must needs be where there are vegetation and the seasons.But even the seasons, in park scenery, are marred by the LITTLE TOO MUCH, too complete a winter, too emphatic a spring, an ostentatious summer, an autumn too demonstrative.