'Seek to have less rather than more.' It is a counsel of perfection in
_The Imitation of Christ_. And here, undoubtedly, is the secret of
all that is virile and classic in the art of man, and of all in nature
that is most harmonious with that art. Moreover, this is the secret of
Italy. How little do the tourists and the poets grasp this latter truth,
by the way--and the artists! The legend of Italy is to be gorgeous, and
they have her legend by rote. But Italy is slim and all articulate; her
most characteristic trees are those that are distinct and distinguished,
with lines that suggest the etching-point rather than a brush loaded with
paint. Cypresses shaped like flames, tall pines with the abrupt flatness
of their tops, thin canes in the brakes, sharp aloes by the road-side,
and olives with the delicate acuteness of the leaf--these make keen lines
of slender vegetation. And they own the seasons by a gentle confession.
Rather than be overpowered by the clamorous proclamation of summer in the
English woods, we would follow June to this subtler South: even to the
Campagna, where the cycle of the seasons passes within such narrow
limitations that insensitive eyes scarcely recognise it. In early spring
there is a fresher touch of green on all the spaces of grass, the
distance grows less mellow and more radiant; by the coming of May the
green has been imperceptibly dimmed again; it blushes with the mingled
colours of minute and numberless flowers--a dust of flowers, in lines
longer than those of ocean billows. This is the desert blossoming like a
rose: not the obvious rose of gardens, but the multitudinous and various
flower that gathers once in the year in every hand's-breadth of the
wilderness. When June comes the sun has burnt all to leagues of
harmonious seed, coloured with a hint of the colour of harvest, which is
gradually changed to the lighter harmonies of winter. All this fine
chromatic scale passes within such modest boundaries that it is accused
as a monotony. But those who find its modesty delightful may have a
still more delicate pleasure in the blooming and blossoming of the sea.