rman abbey from the street. If,
therefore, one talks of anything beautiful in England, the presumption will
be that it is private; and indeed such is my admiration of this delightful
country that I feel inclined to say that if one talks of anything private,
the presumption will be that it is beautiful. Here is something of a
dilemma. If the observer permits himself to commemorate charming
impressions, he is in danger of giving to the world the fruits of
friendship and hospitality. If, on the other hand, he withholds his
impression, he lets something admirable slip away without having marked its
passage, without having done it proper honor. He ends by mingling
discretion with enthusiasm, and he says to himself that it is not treating
a country ill to talk of its treasures when the mention of each connotes,
as the metaphysicians say, an act of private courtesy.

The impressions I have in mind in writing these lines were gathered in a
part of England of which I had not before had even a traveller's glimpse;
but as to which, after a day or two, I found myself quite ready to agree
with a friend who lived there, and who knew and loved it well, when he said
very frankly, "I _do_ believe it is the loveliest corner of the world!"
This was not a dictum to quarrel about, and while I was in the neighborhood
I was quite of his mind. I felt that it would not take a great deal to make
me care for it very much as he cared for it: I had a glimpse of the
peculiar tenderness with which such a country may be loved. It is a capital
example of the great characteristic of English scenery--of what I should
call density of feature. There are no waste details; everything in the
landscape is something particular--has a history, has played a part, has a
value to the imagination. It is a country of hills and blue undulations,
and, though none of the hills are high, all of them are
interesting--interesting as such things are interesting in an old, small
country, by a kind of exquisite modulation, something suggesting that
outline and coloring have been retouched and refined, as it were, by the
hand of Time. Independently of its castles and abbeys, the definite relics
of the ages, such a landscape seems historic. It has human relations, and
it is intimately conscious of them. That little speech about the
loveliness of his county, or of his own part of his county, was made to me
by my companion as we walked up the grassy slope of a hill, or "edge," as