the
ardour and patience of a botanist after a rare plant. Day by day we
perfect ourselves in the art of seeing nature more favourably. We learn
to live with her, as people learn to live with fretful or violent
spouses: to dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes against
all that is bleak or inharmonious. We learn, also, to come to each
place in the right spirit. The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us,
"_fait des discours en soi pour se soutenir en chemin_"; and into these
discourses he weaves something out of all that he sees and suffers by
the way; they take their tone greatly from the varying character of the
scene; a sharp ascent brings different thoughts from a level road; and
the man's fancies grow lighter as he comes out of the wood into a
clearing. Nor does the scenery any more affect the thoughts than the
thoughts affect the scenery. We see places through our humours as
through differently-coloured glasses. We are ourselves a term in the
equation, a note of the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at
will. There is no fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves
sufficiently to the country that surrounds and follows us, so that we
are ever thinking suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some suitable
sort of story as we go. We become thus, in some sense, a centre of
beauty; we are provocative of beauty, much as a gentle and sincere
character is provocative of sincerity and gentleness in others. And even
where there is no harmony to be elicited by the quickest and most
obedient of spirits, we may still embellish a place with some attraction
of romance. We may learn to go far afield for associations, and handle
them lightly when we have found them. Sometimes an old print comes to
our aid; I have seen many a spot lit up at once with picturesque
imaginations, by a reminiscence of Callot, or Sadeler, or Paul Brill.
Dick Turpin has been my lay figure for many an English lane. And I
suppose the Trossachs would hardly be the Trossachs for most tourists if
a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled it for them with
harmonious figures, and brought them thither with minds rightly prepared
for the impression. There is half the battle in this preparation. For
instance: I have rarely been able to visit, in the proper spirit, the
wild and inhospitable places of our own Highlands. I am happier where it
is tame and fertile, and not readily pleased without trees. I
understand that there are