It is perhaps not without significance that the word "countryside"
was not to be found in Webster's dictionary, till a recent edition.
Originally, doubtless, it was used with reference to those rural
districts in the vicinity of a town; as one might say the country side
of the town. Not wild or solitary nature was meant, but nature
humanized, made companionable by the presence and occupations of man; a
nature which had made the winding highway, the farm, and the pasture,
even the hamlet, with its church tower and its ancient inn, one with
herself.

The American, speeding up to London from his landing either at Liverpool
or Southampton, always exclaims on the gardenlike aspect, the deep, rich
greenness of the landscape. It is not so much the specific evidences of
cultivation, though those, of course, are plentifully present, but a
general air of ripeness and order. Even the land not visible under
cultivation suggests immemorial care and fertility. We feel that this
land has been fought over and ploughed over, nibbled over by sheep, sown
and reaped, planted and drained, walked over, hunted over, and very much
beloved, for centuries. It is not fanciful to see in it a land to
which its people have been stubbornly and tenderly devoted--still
"Shakespeare's England," still his favoured "isle set in the silver
sea."

As seen from the railway-carriage window, one is struck, too, by the
comparative tidiness of the English landscape. There are few loose ends,
and the outskirts of villages are not those distressing dump-heaps
which they too often are in America. Yet there is no excessive air of
trimness. The order and grooming seem a part of nature's processes.
There is, too, a casual charm about the villages themselves, the
graceful, accidental grouping of houses and gardens, which suggests