of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging
it,--a ripple over three or four stones in the stream by the
bridge,--above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two,
looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one got to the other
side of the trees, will instantly give me intense delight, because the
shadow, or the hope, of the hills is in them.

Sec. 2. And thus, although there are few districts of Northern Europe,
however apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure, though
the whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to
most travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and, putting
Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat
districts aside, there is not an English county which I should not find
entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all my
best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, coloring,
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 south-west, 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 seen 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.[106]

Sec. 3. I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that I must not
trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the
modern landscape i