Probably most people's heads are growing bare before
they can see all in a landscape that they have the capability of seeing;
and, even then, it will be only for one little moment of consummation
before the faculties are again on the decline, and they that look out of
the windows begin to be darkened and restrained in sight. Thus the study
of nature should be carried forward thoroughly and with system. Every
gratification should be rolled long under the tongue, and we should be
always eager to analyse and compare, in order that we may be able to
give some plausible reason for our admirations. True, it is difficult to
put even approximately into words the kind of feelings thus called into
play. There is a dangerous vice inherent in any such intellectual
refining upon vague sensation. The analysis of such satisfactions lends
itself very readily to literary affectations; and we can all think of
instances where it has shown itself apt to exercise a morbid influence,
even upon an author's choice of language and the turn of his sentences.
And yet there is much that makes the attempt attractive; for any
expression, however imperfect, once given to a cherished feeling, seems
a sort of legitimation of the pleasure we take in it. A common sentiment
is one of those great goods that make life palatable and ever new. The
knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things, even
if they are little things, not much otherwise than we have seen them,
will continue to the end to be one of life's choicest pleasures.

Let the reader, then, betake himself in the spirit we have recommended
to some of the quieter kinds of English landscape. In those homely and
placid agricultural districts, familiarity will bring into relief many
things worthy of notice, and urge them pleasantly home to him by a sort
of loving repetition; such as the wonderful life-giving speed of
windmill sails above the stationary country; the occurrence and
recurrence of the same church tower at the end of one long vista after
another; and, conspicuous among these sources of quiet pleasure, the
character and variety of the road itself, along which he takes his way.
Not only near at hand, in the lithe contortions with which it adapts
itself to the interchanges of level and slope, but far away also, when
he sees a few hundred feet of it upheaved against a hill and shining in
the afternoon sun, he will find it an object so changeful and enlivening
that he can alw