There are as many types of natural scenery in England almost as there are counties. To attempt to describe all in this one volume would be absurd. Yet to generalise on English natural beauty is difficult, because of that great diversity. Who can suggest, for instance, a common denominator to suit the Devonshire Moors, the Norfolk Broads, the Surrey Downs, and the Thames Valley? But since one must generalise, it is safe to give as the predominant feature of England's natural beauty that which strikes most obviously the eye of the stranger used to other countries.
Nine out of ten strangers coming to England for the first time, and asked to speak of its appearance, will say something equivalent to "park-like." England in truth looks like one great well-ordered park, under the charge of a skilful landscape gardener. The trees seem to grow with an eye to effect, the meadows to be designed for vistas, the hedges for reliefs. The land indeed does not seem ever to be doing anything—not at all a correct impression in fact, that, but it is the one conveyed irresistibly.
One soon notices that the tree must in France work for its living. It cannot aspire to the luxurious and beautiful existence of its English brothers, who in their woods and copses have little to do but to "utter green leaves joyously" in the spring, glow with burnished glory in the autumn, and unrobe delicate traceries for admiration in the winter. In France a tree may live on the edge of a road or as one of a cluster sheltering a farmhouse, or keep many other trees company in a State pine forest which will help to make those execrable French matches; but its every twig is utilised, and a hard-working existence takes away much of its beauty. The æsthetic tree, the tree with nothing to do but just to be a tree and look pretty, is rare in most countries; but in England it is the commonplace. Other countries have useful trees which look pretty, forests which are impressive in spite of man. England seems to share with Japan the amiable thriftlessness of giving up much land to growth which is not intended to serve any base utilitarian purpose at all.
The hedges, which take up a considerable fraction of English arable soil, help to the park-like appearance of the country. They are inexpressibly beautiful when spring wakes them up to pipe their roulades in tender green. In summer they are splendid in blazon of leaf and flower. In autumn they flaunt banners of gold and red and brown. In winter, too, they are still beautiful, especially in the early winter when there still survive a few scarlet berries to glow and crackle and almost burn in the frost. If England, in a mood of thrift, swept away her hedges and put in their places fences (or that nice sense of keeping boundaries which enables the French cultivator to do without either), the saving of land would be enormous. But much of the park-like beauty of the country-side would depart; and with it the predominant note of the English landscape, which is that of the estate of a rich, careful, orderly nobleman.
The change will be slow in coming, if it comes at all; for though he would be the last man, probably, to suspect it, the Englishman is at heart æsthetic. Yes, in spite of horse-hair furniture, gilt-framed oleographs, wax-flower decorations, and Early Victorian wall-papers, and other sins of which many of him have been, and still are, guilty, the Englishman has planted in him an instinct for art. It shows in his love of nature, of the green of his England. Almost every one aspires to come into touch with a bit of plant life. In the East End of London the aspiration takes the form of a window garden. You may see workingmen's "flats" let at six shillings a week with their window gardens. In the West End, land which must be worth many thousands of pounds per acre is devoted to garden use. For want of better, a terrace of houses will have a little strip of plantation, at back or front, common to all of them. House and "flat" agents tell that tenants almost always demand that there shall be at least sight of a green tree from some window. In the small suburban villas a very considerable tax of money and labour is cheerfully paid in the effort to keep in good order a little pocket-handkerchief of lawn and a few shrubs. This love of the garden is holy and wholesome, and it proves, I think, that the Englishman is at heart a lover of the beautiful, an "æsthetic," though he is supposed to be such a dull, prosaic, practical person.
Comparing the English with the French on this point, in my opinion it is in the practical application of æsthetic principles to life rather than in æsthetic sensibility that the French are superior to the English. What difference there is in æstheticism favours the English; there are deeper springs of art and poetry in the English people than in the French. But art has been far more carefully cherished and organised in France than in England. There is more general artistic education, if less true artistic feeling.
Approach a typical French village of a modern type. The first impression given by the houses is of a vastly superior artistic consciousness. Both in colour and in form the houses are more beautiful than the same types in England, where domestic architecture of the villa type so often suggests either a penal establishment or the need of a penal establishment for the designer. But look a little closer, and one notices that, as compared with an English town, there is in France a conspicuous absence of gardens. Decorative trees, shrubberies, flowers are rare. Where there is garden space it is, as like as not, devoted to some shocking attempt at grandiose rococo work. The interiors, too, are disappointing. Thrift suggests the hideous closed-in stove as a substitute for open fires; but the garish wall-papers, the coloured prints, the "decorations" of shell-work or china, and so on, are not necessary, and are far more ugly than those of the average poor home in England, even of the "Early Victorian type." I repeat, the natural artistic standard of the French does not seem to be so high as that of the English, but the standard of artistic education is very much higher.
A KENT MANOR-HOUSE AND GARDEN