e 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.

'Seek to have less rather than more.' It is a counsel of perfection in
_The Imitation of Christ_. And here, undoubtedly, is the secret of
all that is virile and classic in the art of man, and of all in nature
that is most harmonious with that art. Moreover, this is the secret of
Italy. How little do the tourists and the poets grasp this latter truth,
by the way--and the artists! The legend of Italy is to be gorgeous, and
they have her legend by rote. But Italy is slim and all articulate; her
most characteristic trees are those that are distinct and distinguished,
with lines that suggest the etching-point rather than a brush loaded with
paint. Cypresses shaped like flames, tall pines with the abrupt flatness
of their tops, thin canes in the brakes, sharp aloes by the road-side,
and olives with the delicate acuteness of the leaf--these make keen lines
of slender vegetation. And they own the seasons by a gentle confession.
Rather than be overpowered by the clamorous proclamation of summer in the
English woods, we would follow June to this subtler South: even to the
Campagna, where the cycle of the seasons passes within such narrow
limitations that insensitive eyes scarcely recognise it. In early spring
there is a fresher touch of green on all the spaces of grass, the
distance grows less mellow and more radiant; by the coming of May the
green has