For it is rather in nature that we see
resemblance to art, than in art to nature; and we say a hundred
times, 'How like a picture!' for once that we say, 'How like the
truth!' The forms in which we learn to think of landscape are forms
that we have got from painted canvas. Any man can see and understand
a picture; it is reserved for the few to separate anything out of the
confusion of nature, and see that distinctly and with intelligence.
The sun came out before I had been long on my way; and as I had got
by that time to the top of the ascent, and was now treading a
labyrinth of confined by-roads, my whole view brightened considerably
in colour, for it was the distance only that was grey and cold, and
the distance I could see no longer. Overhead there was a wonderful
carolling of larks which seemed to follow me as I went. Indeed,
during all the time I was in that country the larks did not desert
me. The air was alive with them from High Wycombe to Tring; and as,
day after day, their 'shrill delight' fell upon me out of the vacant
sky, they began to take such a prominence over other conditions, and
form so integral a part of my conception of the country, that I could
have baptized it 'The Country of Larks.
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