THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE LOVE OF NATURE IN THE ENGLISH LITERATURE OVER THAT OF ALL OTHER MODERN NATIONS—THE PROMOTION OF THIS PASSION BY THE WRITINGS OF PROFESSOR WILSON, IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE; AND BY THE WOOD-CUTS OF BEWICK—MEANS OF STILL FURTHER ENCOURAGING IT.  
In the former chapter I have endeavoured to point out the existence of a striking difference as it regards the love of nature between the classical and modern literature, and to explain, and I hope successfully, the principal causes of it. But it is not the less true, that almost as great a difference exists in this same respect between our British literature, and that of almost all other modern nations. I do not intend to go about very laboriously to attempt to prove this fact, for I think it stands sufficiently self-evident on the face of all modern literature. In science, in art, in history; philosophy, natural and moral; in theological, philological and classical inquiries, the continental nations have attained the highest honours. In biography the French are unrivalled; in autobiography[325] the Germans are equally so. In some species of poetry the Germans contest the palm with us; in mathematical industry, and historical research, they are greatly our superiors; but with the solitary exceptions of Gesner, Sturm, and St. Pierre, where have they any writers to range with our Evelyns, Whites, and Waltons? or poets, with our Thomsons and Bloomfields? or indeed, with the whole series of our poets who do not professedly write on the country, but are irresistibly led to it; and from whom the love of it breaks out on all occasions? In the French, the social feeling is the most strongly developed; in the Italian, passion and fancy; in the German, the metaphysical. The Germans, indeed, most strongly resemble the English in their literary tastes. There seems to be a fellow-feeling between them, resulting from ancient kinship. They have a similar character of simplicity; they are alike grave, solid, and domestic, and prone to deep and melancholy thought. They have a love of nature deep as ours, for the tone of their minds makes them, in every thing they do attach themselves to, earnest and enthusiastic. In every thing relating to the affections, their literature is unrivalled; their feelings are profound, tender, and spiritual; and while a false and superficial taste has made rapid strides amongst us of late years—a taste for glitter, shew, and fashion, the natural accompaniment of wealth and luxury, a growing fondness for German literature must be hailed as a good omen; as likely to give a new infusion of heart and mind to our writings; to re-awaken our love for the simple, the domestic—the fireside love; in fact, to bring us back to what was the ancient character of the English; high-toned in morals, simple in manners, manly and affectionate in heart. Their love of nature is as deep as ours; but it is not so equally and extensively diffused. The solemn and speculative cast of their genius has tended to link it with the gloom of forests and tempests, and with the wild fictions of the supernatural, rather than to scatter it over every cheerful field, and cause it to brood over every sunny cottage-garden, amid the odour of flowers and the hum of bees. There is something wonderfully attractive in their descriptions of the old-fashioned homeliness of their rural and domestic manners; in the unbustling quietness of their lives, and in the holy strength of their family attachments. Such writings as that Idyl of Voss, describing the[326] manner of life of the venerable pastor of Grenau, the autobiographies of Goethe and Stilling, seem to carry us back into the simple ages of our own country. That which characterised them, seems to be preserved to the present hour in Germany; and then, the affectionate intellectuality of their minds, and their very language, so homely and yet so expressive, cause them to abound in such touches of natural pathos as are nowhere else to be found. Yet, when their love of nature exhibits itself in descriptions of country life, amid all these charms, we are often tempted to exclaim with the pastor’s wife in Voss, when in a pic-nic party they discovered, while taking tea under the forest trees, that they had forgotten the tea-spoons, and had to substitute pieces of stick for them—“O, dear nature, thou art almost too natural!”
But the aspect of the different countries is sufficiently indicative of the natural feeling. Instead of the solitary chateau, or baronial castle, amid dark forests, or wide unfenced plains; instead of the great landed proprietors crowding into large towns, and the very labourers huddling themselves into villages, and going, as they do, in some parts of France, seven or eight miles on asses to their daily work in the fields, the hills and valleys of England are studded all over with the dwellings of the landed gentry, and the cottages of their husbandmen. Villas amid shrubberies and gardens; villages environed with old-fashioned crofts; farm-houses and cottages, singly or in groups—a continuous chain of cultivation and rustic residences stretches from end to end and side to side of the island. Our wealthy aristocrats have caught a fatal passion for burying themselves in the capital in a perpetual turmoil of political agitations, ostentatious rivalry, and dissipation—a passion fatal to their own happiness and to the whole character of their minds; but the love of the country is yet strong enough in large classes to maintain our pre-eminence in this respect. The testimony of foreigners, however, is stronger than our own; and foreigners are always struck with the garden-like aspect of England; and the charms of our country houses. A number of a French literary paper, “Le Panorama de Londres,” has fallen accidentally into my hands, while writing this, which contains an article—De la Poesie Anglaise et de la Poesie Allemande—from which I transcribe the following passages.
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“England has produced her great epic poet, her great dramatic poet; and the last age gave her reasoning poets in abundance. The time for the one and the other is past. By a revolution, the causes of which it would be difficult to trace, her poetry has changed both its character and object; and strange enough, under the reign of a civilization the most advanced, her poetry has returned to nature. At first, the fact strikes us as an unaccountable anomaly; for what country owes so much to art as England? The very aspect of the country shews everywhere the hand of man. A scientific culture has changed its whole face. The forests have ceased to be impenetrable; the rivers to be wild torrents; the mountains themselves to be savage. Human industry has appropriated every thing; fire, air, earth, every thing is subjected, every thing is tamed. The very animals seem to submit themselves voluntarily to the service of man. The horse himself, the English horse, so swift and powerful, scarcely neighs with impatience, or capers with eagerness; his very impetuosity is docile. The Englishman is in one sense the king of the world. It is for him that every thing is in motion around him: yet he himself is bound by unchangeable customs. He fears change. He has even a religion of an established order. One would think nothing could be more prosaic than a country thus laboured; yet, nevertheless, all Europe resounds with the songs of her poets. Amid the miracles of industry, the profusion of riches, the refinement of luxury; in the face of steam-engines, suspension bridges, and railroads, imagination has lost nothing of its ancient empire; on the contrary, during the last thirty years, she has acquired more; she has been borne, as by an irresistible influence, towards the description of natural objects and simple sentiments. She has revelled in the charms of a poetry whose freshness seemed to belong to another age. The fact is, if we regard England more attentively, we shall discover her under a different aspect to what has been usually ascribed to her; and shall be less astonished to find her poetic in seeing her picturesque. That agriculture, so marvellous, is far from having given up every thing to the useful; its object seems rather to have been to embellish than to fertilize the earth. Those fields so well tilled, are green and riant; those quiet streams flow brimful through rich meadows; and, thanks to beautiful trees and living[328] hedges, the very plains are charming. Those seats where opulence parades all its splendour, are environed by greensward pastured by abundant cattle; and the art which designs those immense parks, seems to have no object but to put into a frame a beautiful landscape. The taste is no longer to dig lakes, to cast up mounts, to plant thickets; but to inclose whole rivers, woods, and mountains. Everywhere you discover the sentiment of the beauty of nature. You find it in every class. Neither riches nor poverty have been able to extinguish it. We observe in other countries that the sentiment is unknown to the peasantry. They are the towns which they admire: to them the country is merely useful. But in England everybody loves the country; even those who cultivate it. The most humble cottage is a proof of it. The taste which rarely distinguishes the architecture of the English towns, is reserved, I think, for the country houses. The little gardens which lead to them; the orchards which surround them; even the very bushes of jessamine or of rose, which crown their porches or tapestry their walls, seem designed to delight the eye. Amid the treasures of an admirable vegetation—gothic ruins, the towers of an old manor, the arches of an abbey, the ivy which clothes the walls of a parish church; the tree scathed and decaying, which has no value but its age; all these things are respected by every one as the monuments of the past, or the ornaments of the country. The whole population interests itself in every thing which adorns its abode; and this nation, the queen of commerce and industry, seems to recollect with affection, that it is to the earth that she owes her wealth, her glory, and her greatness.
“An analogous sentiment pervades the poetry of the English. The verses of their good poets seem to have been composed in the open air; all external objects are by them faithfully portrayed; the impressions they produce are faithfully rendered. Simple sentiments, those of a domestic nature, so well protected by a country life, in them preserve all their force and all their purity. Their recitals are often the most touching and familiar; when they turn upon great adventures, they are related as they would be on a winter’s evening before the fire of an ancient castle, or of a humble cottage. Scarcely an English poet is wanting in descriptive talent, not even the least celebrated amongst them. It shines with great[329] eclat in Burns, in Crabbe, in Walter Scott. Lord Byron, who has so many others, possesses none perhaps in a greater degree than this.”
It is to be hoped that the English poetry will always maintain this character; will always remain the powerful ally of the love of the country: one great means of preserving those features of English rural life so delightfully described in the foregoing extract. Amid the fascinations and temptations to a corruption of taste, from the mighty wealth and political influence of this country, it is to the combined effect of real, simple Christianity, the love of nature, and of that literature which is in alliance with those great conservative powers, that we must look for the maintenance of a sound national heart and intellect; and consequently, of that great moral ascendency, and genuine glory, that as a nation we have obtained. I long with a most earnest longing, for our stability in this respect; for the preservation of those pure, simple, holy tastes which have led our countrymen in all ages, since reading and civilization came upon them, to delight in the pleasant fields, in the pleasant country houses, in the profound peace of noble woods, so favourable to high and solemn musings; and in all those healthful and animating sports and pursuits that belong to such a life. It has been through the influence of these tastes, and of these home-born but exalted pleasures, by the strong human sympathies engendered by living amongst our manly and high-minded peasantry—the hardy sons and bold defenders of their natal soil,—the strong-hearted old fathers,—the fair and modest daughters of uncorrupted England; by living amongst them as their leaders, counsellors, and protectors; by musing over the inspiring annals of the past days of England; on the solid tomes of our legislators, our divines, philosophers and poets, in the calm twilight of ancient halls, or in the sunny seats of their broad bay-windows, looking out on fields purchased by the blood of patriots, and hoary forests, that have witnessed the toils of their ancestors, or perhaps received them to their dim bosoms in times of danger; it is by such aliment that the British heart has been nourished, and grown to its present greatness, when its pulsations are felt to the very ends of the earth, and by millions of confiding or submissive men, whose destinies[330] depend upon its motions. Our arms may have been wielded in many a mighty battle for the accomplishment of this magnificent end, but it was here that the power of victory grew: our counsels may have, wearily, and stroke by stroke, worked out this ample breadth of glory; but it is here, and it was thus, that the wisdom, and the prudence, and the irresistible fortitude sprung, increased, and gave to those brave men and high measures their vigour and stability; here that they were born, and fostered to their beneficent fulness.
Therefore would I have every thing which may tend to keep alive this genuine spirit of England, may keep open all the sources of its strength and its inspiration, encouraged: every taste for the sweet serenity, the animating freshness, the preserving purity of country life, promoted; every thing which can embellish or render it desirable. For this cause I delight in the every-day spreading attachment to all branches of Natural History; in the great encouragement given to all books on country affairs; and in the advancing love of landscape-painting, by which the most enchanting views of our mountains, coasts, wild lakes, forests, and pastoral downs will be brought into our cities, and spread in sunshine and in poetry along their walls. For this I am thankful, with a deep thankfulness, for the mighty strains of poetry that have been poured out in this age, brimmed and gushing over with the august spirit of nature: for Wordsworth and Coleridge; Rogers and Campbell; for Shelley and Byron and Keats, and for many another noble bard; for the Romances of Scott, which have pre-eminently piled quenchless fuel on this social flame, by sanctifying many of the most beautiful scenes in the kingdom with the highest historical remembrances; and not less, for that wonderful series of articles by Wilson, in Blackwood’s Magazine,—in their kind, as truly amazing, and as truly glorious, as the romances of Scott, or the poetry of Wordsworth. Far and wide and much as these papers have been admired, wherever the English language is read, I still question whether any one man has a just idea of them as a whole. Whatever may be our opinion of the side which this powerful journal has taken in politics, it must be admitted that while it has fought the battles of Toryism with vigour, it has fought them in a noble spirit. There was a day when a foul influence[331] had crept into it; when it was personal, rancorous, and apt to descend to language and details below the dignity of its strength; but that day is gone by, and it has been seen with lively satisfaction by all parties that it has purged itself of this evil nature, and as it has become peerless in fame,—it has become more and more generous, forgiving, and superior to every petty nature and narrow feeling. Its politics are ultra, but they are full of intellect; and they who desire to see what can be said on the Tory side, see it there. But the great attraction to literary men has long been, that splendid series of ample, diffuse, yet overflowing papers, in which every thing relating to poetry and nature find a place. These are singly, and in themselves, specimens of transcendent power; but taken altogether, as a series, are, in the sure unity of one great and correct spirit, such a treasury of criticism as is without a parallel in the annals of literature. For, while they are full of the soundest opinions, because they are the offspring of a deeply poetical mind—a mind strong in the guiding instincts of nature; they are preserved from the dryness and technicality of ordinary criticism by this very poetic temperament. They come upon you like some abounding torrent, streaming on, amid the wildest and noblest scenes; amid mountains and forests and flowery meadows; and bringing to your senses, at once, all their freshness of odours, dews, and living sounds. They are the gorgeous outpourings of a wild, erratic eloquence, that, in its magnificent rush, throws out the most startling, and apparently conflicting dogmas, yet all bound together by a strong bond of sound sense and incorruptible feeling.
They are all poetry:—sometimes, in its weakest and most diluted form; again, gushing into the most melting pathos; and then again playing and frolicking like a happy boy, half beside himself with holiday freedom and sunshine; then vapouring, and rhodomontading, and reeling along in the very drunkenness of a luxuriant fancy, intoxicated at the ambrosia-fountains of the heart; and then, like a strong man, all at once recovering his power and self-possession—if self-possession that can be called, which, in the next moment, gives way to a new impulse, and soars up into the highest regions of eloquence, pouring forth the noblest sentiments and most fervid imaginations, as from an oracle of quenchless inspiration.
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It is in this manner, and this spirit, that the writer has—reviewed shall I say? no, not reviewed, but proclaimed, trumpeted to the farthest regions, idealized, etherealized, and made almost more glorious than they are in their own solemn grandeur, the poems of Wordsworth, of Milton, of Shakspeare, of Spenser, of Homer, and of many another genuine bard. And it is thus that he has led you over the heathy mountains and along the fairy glens of the north, to many a sweet secluded loch, into many a Highland hut. It is thus that he loves to make you observe the noble peasant striding along in his prime of youth—in his sedate manhood—in his hoary age, more beautiful than youth, for then he is crowned with the wisdom of his simple experience of the trials and vanity of life, and of the feeling that he draws near to eternity. It is thus that he bids you stand, and mark the fair young maiden busied about the door of her parental hut, more graceful and happy in the engrossment of her simple duties, beneath the sun and the blue heavens, than the very daughter of the palace in the lap of her artificial enchantments. It is thus he shews you the young mother tossing her laughing infant in the open air, while her two elder children are rolling on the sunny sward, or scrambling up the heathy brae; and her mother sits silently by the door, in the basking tranquillity of age. It is thus that he fills you with the noblest sympathies, with the purest human feelings; and then astonishes you with some sudden feat of leaping, running, or wrestling; and as suddenly i............