tions or exclamations arising out of their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as that of Marmion:

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practise to deceive !"

But the reflections which are founded, not on events, but on scenes, are, for the most part, shallow, partly insincere, and, as far as sincere, sorrowful. This habit of ineffective dreaming and moralizing over passing scenes, of which the earliest type I know is given in Jaques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satisfaction made to our modern consciences for the want of a sincere acknowledgment of God in nature: and Shakspeare has marked it as the characteristic of a mind "compact of jars" (Act II. Sc. VII., As You Like It). That description attaches but too accurately to all the moods which we have traced in the moderns generally, and in Scott as the first representative of them; and the question now is, what this love of landscape, so composed, is likely to lead us to, and what use can be made of it.

We began our investigation, it will be remembered, in order to determine whether landscape-painting was worth studying or not. We have now reviewed the three principal phases of temper in the civilized human race, and we find that landscape has been mostly disregarded by great men, or cast into a second place, until now; and that now it seems dear to us, partly in consequence of our faults, and partly owing to accidental circumstances, soon, in all likelihood, to pass away: and there seems great room for question still, whether our love of it is a permanent and healthy feeling, or only a healthy crisis in a generally diseased state of mind. If the former, society will forever hereafter be affected by its results; and Turner, the first great landscape-painter, must take a place in the history of nations corresponding in art accurately to that of Bacon in philosophy;-Bacon having first opened the

study of the laws of material nature, when, formerly, men had thought only of the laws of human mind; and Turner having first opened the study of the aspect of material nature, when, before, men had thought only of the aspect of the human form. Whether, therefore, the love of landscape be trivial and transient, or important and permanent, it now becomes necessary to consider. We have, I think, data enough before us for the solution of the question, and we will enter upon it, accordingly, in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE.

§ 1. SUPPOSING then the preceding conclusions correct, respecting the grounds and the component elements of the pleasure which the moderns take in landscape, we have here to consider what are the probable or usual ef fects of this pleasure. Is it a safe or a seductive one? May we wisely boast of it, and unhesitatingly indulge it? or is it rather a sentiment to be despised when it is slight, and condemned when it is intense; a feeling which disinclines us to labor, and confuses us in thought; a joy only to the inactive and the visionary, incompatible with the duties of life, and the accuracies of reflection?

§ 2. It seems to me that, as matters stand at present, there is considerable ground for the latter opinion. We saw, in the preceding chapter, that our love of nature had been partly forced upon us by mistakes in our social economy, and led to no distinct issues of action or thought. And when we look to Scott-the man who feels it most deeply-for some explanation of its effect upon him, we find a curious tone of apology (as if for involuntary folly) running through his confessions of such sentiment, and a still more curious inability to define, beyond a certain point, the character of this emotion. He has lost the company of his friends among the hills, and turns to these last for comfort. He says, "there is a pleasure in the pain" consisting in such thoughts

but, when we look for some definition of these thoughts, all that we are told is, that they compose

a sentiment which, I suppose, many people can attain to on the loss of their friends, without the help of lakes or mountains; while Wordsworth definitely and positively affirms that thought has nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that though, in his youth, the cataract and wood "haunted him like a passion," it was without the help of any "remoter charm, by thought supplied."

§ 3. There is not, however, any question, but that both Scott and Wordsworth are here mistaken in their analysis of their feelings. Their delight, so far from being without thought, is more than half made up of thought, but of thought in so curiously languid and neutralized a condition that they cannot trace it. The thoughts are beaten to a powder so small that they know not what they are; they know only that in such a state they are not good for much, and disdain to call them thoughts. But the way in which thought, even thus broken, acts in producing the delight will be understood by glancing back to §§ 9 and 10 of the tenth chapter, in which we observed the power of the imagination in exalting any visible object, by gathering round it, in farther vision. all the facts properly connected with it; this being, as it were, a spiritual or second sight, multiplying the power of enjoyment according to the fulness of the vision. For, indeed, although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses us most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty. That beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers and glittering streams, and blue sky, and white clouds; *Marmion, Introduction to canto II.

and yet the thing that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a thin gray film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near at hand bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but, because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work, and the other gray film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed by the aspect of it; and yet, all the while the thoughts and knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure that we are not conscious of them; we think we are only enjoying the visible scene; and the very men whose minds are fullest of such thoughts absolutely deny, as we have just heard, that they owe their pleasure to anything but the eye, or that the pleasure consists in anything else than "Tranquillity."

§ 4. And observe, farther, that this comparative Dimness and Untraceableness of the thoughts which are the sources of our admiration, is not fault in the thoughts, at such a time. It is, on the contrary, a necessary condition of their subordination to the pleasure of Sight. If the thoughts were more distinct we should not see so well; and beginning definitely to think, we must comparatively cease to see. In the instance just supposed, as long as we look at the film of mountain or Alp, with only an obscure consciousness of its being the source of mighty rivers, that consciousness adds to our sense of its sublimity; and if we have ever seen the Rhine or the Rhone near their mouths, our knowledge, so long as it is only obscurely suggested, adds to our admiration of the Alp; but once let the idea define itself, once let us begin to consider seriously what rivers flow from that mountain, to trace their course, and to recall determinately our memories of their distant as