Here we dominate over the nature which there subjugated us. I quit willingly, and without one wistful glance, the overwhelming paradise where, a feeble child, I have languished in the arms of the great nurse who, with a too potent draught, has intoxicated while thinking to suckle me.
This milder nature was made for me, is my legitimate spouse—I recognize her. And, above all, she resembles me; like me, she is grave, she is laborious, she has the instinct of work and patience.
Her renewed seasons share among themselves her great annual day, as the workman's day alternates between toil and repose. She gives no fruit gratuitously; she gives what is worth all the fruits of earth—industry, activity.
With what rapture I find there to-day my image, the trace of my will, the creations of my exertions and my intelligence! Deeply laboured by me, by me metamorphosed, she relates to me my works, reproduces to me myself. I see her as she was before she underwent this human creative work, before she was made man.
Monotonous at the first glance, and melancholy, she exhibited her forests and meadows; but both strangely different from those which are seen elsewhere.
The meadow, the rich green carpet of England and Ireland, with its delicate soft sward constantly springing up afresh—not the rough fleece of the Asiatic steppes, not the spiny and hostile vegetation of Africa, not the bristling savagery of American savannahs, where the smallest plant is woody and harshly arborescent—the European meadow, through its annual and ephemeral vegetation, its lowly little flowers, with mild and gentle odours, wears a youthful aspect; nay, more, an aspect of innocence, which harmonizes with our thoughts and refreshes our hearts.
On this first layer of humble yielding herbage, which has no pretensions to mount higher, stands out in bold contrast the strong individuality of the robust trees, so different from the confused vegetation of meridional forests.
Who can single out, beneath such a mass of lianas, orchids, and parasitical plants, the trees, themselves herbaceous, which are there, so to speak, engulphed? In our ancient forests of Gaul and Germany stand, strong and serious, slowly and solidly built, the elm or the oak—that forest hero, with kindly arms and heart of steel, which has conquered eight or ten centuries, and which, when felled by man and associated with his labours, endows them with the eternity of the works of nature.
