will risk incurring your
ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I may succeed in
making some of you English youths like better to look at a bird than to
shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame, instead of tame
creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, I think, now
calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more important modes, than
that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask you to let me
state at some length.

24. Observe first;--no race of men which is entirely bred in wild
country, far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the
beauty of animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the
beauty of cattle; but only qualities expressive of their
serviceableness. I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion
of it, under my confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only
be enjoyed by cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature,
and painting, that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which
are thus received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race
has an innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds
of years before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest
things in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained by
surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds,
there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as
_memorial_; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others;
but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great
national life;--the obedience and the peace of ages having extended
gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral
land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from
whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and
inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the
sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may
pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every
rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with
noble desolateness.

25. Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive
love of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will
pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to
strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is only
worthy of the soil and the sc