lowlands: but as for this newfangled admiration of them, it is a
proof that our senses are dulled by luxury and books, and that we
require to excite our palled organ of marvellousness by signs and
wonders, aesthetic brandy and cayenne. No. I have remarked often
that the most unimaginative people, who can see no beauty in a
cultivated English field or in the features of a new-born babe, are
the loudest ravers about glorious sunsets and Alpine panoramas; just
as the man with no music in his soul, to whom a fugue of Sebastian
Bach, or one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, means nothing, and
is nothing thinks a monster concert of drums and trumpets uncommonly
fine.'

This is certainly a sufficiently one-sided diatribe. Still it is
one-sided: and we have heard so much of the other side of late, that
it may be worth while to give this side also a fair and patient
hearing.

At least he who writes wishes that it may have a fair hearing. He
has a sort of sympathy with Lord Macaulay's traveller of a hundred
and fifty years since, who amid the 'horrible desolation' of the
Scotch highlands, sighs for 'the true mountain scenery of Richmond-
hill.' The most beautiful landscape he has ever seen, or cares to
see, is the vale of Thames from Taplow or from Cliefden, looking down
towards Windsor, and up toward Reading; to him Bramshill, looking out
far and wide over the rich lowland from its eyrie of dark pines, or
Littlecote nestling between deer-spotted upland and rich water-
meadow, is a finer sight than any robber castle of the Rhine. He
would not complain, of course, were either of the views backed, like
those glorious ones of Turin or Venice, by the white saw-edge of the
distant Alps: but chiefly because the perpetual sight of that Alp-