entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot,--yet all
my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills,
colouring with their far-away memories every lowland stone and herb.
The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me either
by what real mountain character it has in itself, (for in extent and
succession of promontory, the flanks of the French valleys have quite
the sublimity of true mountain distances,) or by its broken ground and
rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above against
the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave
of the Seine, but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the
sandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau; and with the hope of the
Alps, as one leaves Paris, with the horses' heads to the southwest,
the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there be
no hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot deceive myself
into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be
the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the
landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness
and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor
Terrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual
summer--or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to
Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for
one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern.

[12] This, and the following passage, have nothing to do with the
general statements in the book. They occur with reference only to my own
idiosyncrasy. I was much surprised when I found first how individual it
was, by a Pre-Raphaelite painter's declaring a piece of unwholesome
reedy fen to be more beautiful than Benvenue.

20. I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always
in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the
foot of the old tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble
unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet
without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom,
eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea
grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not
falling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of
what any one thinks or fee