and beautiful trees, but stands comfortlessly between two individuals
of the columns of long-trunked facsimile elms, which keep guard along
the length of the public road.

14. Now, let it be observed how perfectly, how singularly, the
distinctive characters of these two cottages agree with those of the
countries in which they are built; and of the people for whose use they
are constructed. England is a country whose every scene is in
miniature.[2] Its green valleys are not wide; its dewy hills are not
high; its forests are of no extent, or, rather, it has nothing that can
pretend to a more sounding title than that of "wood." Its champaigns are
minutely checkered into fields; we can never see far at a time; and
there is a sense of something inexpressible, except by the truly English
word "snug," in every quiet nook and sheltered lane. The English
cottage, therefore, is equally small, equally sheltered, equally
invisible at a distance.

[Footnote 2: Compare with this chapter, _Modern Painters_, vol. iv.
chap. 1.]

15. But France is a country on a large scale. Low, but long, hills sweep
away for miles into vast uninterrupted champaigns; immense forests
shadow the country for hundreds of square miles, without once letting
through the light of day; its pastures and arable land are divided on
the same scale; there are no fences; we can hardly place ourselves in
any spot where we shall not see for leagues around; and there is a kind
of comfortless sublimity in the size of every scene. The French cottage,
therefore, is on the same scale, equally large and desolate looking;
but we shall see, presently, that it can arouse feelings which, though
they cannot be said to give it sublimity, yet are of a higher order than
any which can be awakened at the sight of the English cottage.

16. Again, every bit of cultivated ground in England has a finished
neatness; the fields are all divided by hedges or fences; the fruit
trees are neatly pruned; the roads beautifully made, etc. Everything is
the reverse in France: the fields are distinguished by the nature of the
crops they bear; the fruit trees are overgrown with moss and mistletoe;
and the roads immeasurably wide, and miserably made.

17. So much for the character of the two cottages, as they assimilate
with the countries in which they are found. Let us now see how they
assimilate with the character of the people by whom they are built.
England is a country of perpetually increasi