CHAPTER II
THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND
It is not strange that Englishmen should be—as certainly they are—passionate lovers of their country; for their country is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beautiful. Even in vast London, where practical life asserts itself with such prodigious force, the stranger is impressed, in every direction, with a sentiment of repose and peace. This sentiment seems to proceed in part from the antiquity of the social system here established, and in part from the affectionate nature of the English people. Here are finished towns, rural regions thoroughly cultivated and exquisitely adorned; ancient architecture, crumbling in slow decay; and a soil so rich and pure that even in its idlest mood it lights itself up with flowers, just as the face of a sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. Here, also, are soft and kindly manners, settled principles, good laws, wise customs—wise, because rooted in the universal attributes of human nature; and, above all, here is the practice of trying to live in a happy condition instead of trying to make a noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is soothed and hallowed with the comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It would, doubtless, be easily possible to come into contact here with absurd forms and pernicious abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and to discover veins of sordid selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the things that first and most deeply impress the observer of England and English society are their potential, manifold, and abundant sources of beauty, refinement, and peace. There are, of course, grumblers. Mention has been made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain that his cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We cannot have perfection; but the man who could not be happy in England—in so far, at least, as happiness depends upon external objects and influences—could not reasonably expect to be happy anywhere.
Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each day, but it causes no discomfort. Fog has refrained; though it is understood to be lurking in the Irish sea and the English channel, and waiting for November, when it will drift into town and grime all the new paint on the London houses. Meantime, the sky is softly blue and full of magnificent bronze clouds; the air is cool, and in the environs of the city is fragrant with the scent of new-mown hay; and the grass and trees in the parks—those copious and splendid lungs of London—are green, dewy, sweet, and beautiful. Persons "to the manner born" were lately calling the season "backward," and they went so far as to grumble at the hawthorne, as being less brilliant than in former seasons. But, in fact, to the unfamiliar sense, this tree of odorous coral has been delicious. We have nothing comparable with it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be the elder, of our wild woods; and even that, with all its fragrance, lacks equal charm of colour. They use the hawthorne, or some kindred shrub, for hedges in this country, and hence their fields are seldom disfigured with fences. As you ride through the land you see miles and miles of meadow traversed by these green and blooming hedgerows, which give the country a charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of the foliage—enriched by an uncommonly humid air and burnished by the sun—is in perfection, while the flowers bloom in such abundance that the whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw near Oxford, on the crest of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet poppies. Imagine that glorious dash of colour in a green landscape lit by the afternoon sun! Nobody could help loving a land that woos him with such beauty.