England is a country with edges and with a core. It is a country very
small for the number of people who live in it, and very appreciable to
the eye for the traveller who travels on foot or in a boat from place to
place. Considering the part it has in the making of the world, it might
justly be compared to a jewel which is very small and very valuable and
can almost be held in the hand. The physical appreciation of England is
to be reached by an appreciation of landscape.

It so happens that England is traversed by remarkable and sudden ranges;
hills with a sharp escarpment overlooking great undulating plains. This
is not true of any other one country of Europe, but it is true of
England, and a man who professes to consider, to understand, to
criticize, to defend, and to love this country, must know the Pennines,
the Cotswolds, the North and the South Downs, the Chilterns, the
Mendips, and the Malverns; he must know Delamere Forest, and he must
know the Hill of Beeston, from which all Cheshire may be perceived. If
he knows these heights and has long considered the prospects which they
afford, he can claim to have seen the face of England.

It is deplorable that our modern method of travel does cut us off from
such experiences. They were not only common to, they were necessary to
our fathers; the roads would not be at the expense of tunnelling through
hills, and (what is more important) when those men who most mould the
knowledge of the country by the country (the people who deal with its
soil, who live separate upon its separate farms) visited each other upon
horses; and horses, unlike railway trains, cannot climb hills. They
puff, they heave, they snort, as do railway trains, but they climb them
well.

On this account, because the roads for the carriages went over hills,