England and Scotland differ, indeed, in law, in history, in
religion, in education, and in the very look of nature and men's
faces, not always widely, but always trenchantly. Many particulars
that struck Mr. Grant White, a Yankee, struck me, a Scot, no less
forcibly; he and I felt ourselves foreigners on many common
provocations. A Scotchman may tramp the better part of Europe and
the United States, and never again receive so vivid an impression
of foreign travel and strange lands and manners as on his first
excursion into England. The change from a hilly to a level country
strikes him with delighted wonder. Along the flat horizon there
arise the frequent venerable towers of churches. He sees at the
end of airy vistas the revolution of the windmill sails. He may go
where he pleases in the future; he may see Alps, and Pyramids, and
lions; but it will be hard to beat the pleasure of that moment.
There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of many
windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody
country; their halting alacrity of movement, their pleasant
business, making bread all day with uncouth gesticulations, their
air, gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit
of romance into the tamest landscape. When the Scotch child sees
them first he falls immediately in love; and from that time forward
windmills keep turning in his dreams. And so, in their degree,
with every feature of the life and landscape. The warm, habitable
age of towns and hamlets, the green, settled, ancient look of the
country; the lush hedgerows, stiles, and privy path-ways in the
fields; the sluggish, brimming rivers; chalk and smock-frocks;
chimes of bells and the rapid, pertly-sounding English speech -
they are all new to the curiosity; they are all set to English airs
in the child's story that he tells himself at night. The sharp
edge of novelty wears off; the feeling is scotched, but I doubt