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ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES.
IT is a difficult matter to make the best of any given place ; and we have much in our
own power. Things looked at patiently from one side after another, generally end by
showing a side that is beautiful. A few months ago some words were said in the Portfolio
as to an 'austere regimen in scenery;' and such a discipline was then recommended as
' healthful and strengthening to the taste.' That is the text, so to speak, of the present essay.
This discipline in scenery, it must be understood, is something more than a mere walk before
breakfast to whet the appetite. For when we are put down in some unsightly neighbourhood,
and especially if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set
ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the ardour and patience of a botanist after a
rare plant. Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of seeing nature favourably. We learn
to live with her, as people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses : to dwell lovingly on
what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. We learn, also,
to come to each place in the right spirit. The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, ' fait
des discours en soi pour se soutenir en chemin ;' and into these discourses he weaves some-
thing out of all that he sees and suffers by the way : they take their tone greatly from the
varying character of the scene ; a sharp ascent brings different thoughts from a level road ;
and the man's fancies grow lighter, as he comes out of the wood into a clearing. Nor does
the scenery any more affect the thoughts, than the thoughts affect the scenery. We see places
through our humours as through differently coloured glasses. We are ourselves a term in the
equation, a note of the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at will. There is no
fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to the country that surrounds
and follows us, so that we are ever thinking suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some
suitable sort of story as we go. We become thus, in some sense, a centre of beauty ; we are
provocative of beauty, much as a gentle and sincere character is provocative of sincerity and
gentleness in others. And even where there is no harmony to be elicited by the quickest
and most obedient of spirits, we may still embellish a place with some attraction of romance.
We may learn to go far afield for associations, and handle them lightly when we have found
them. Sometimes an old print comes to our aid ; I have seen many a spot lit up at once
with picturesque imaginations, by a reminiscence of Callot, or Sadeler, or Paul Brill. Dick
Turpin has been my lay figure for many an English lane. And I suppose the Trossachs would
hardly be the Trossachs for most tourists, if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not
peopled it for them with harmonious figures, and brought them thither with minds rightly
prepared for the impression. There is half the battle in this preparation. For instance : I
have rarely been able to visit, in the proper spirit, the wild and inhospitable places of our
own Highlands. I am happier where it is tame and fertile, and not readily pleased without
trees. I understand that there are some phases of mental trouble that harmonise well with
such surroundings, and that some persons, by the dispensing power of the imagination, can
go back several centuries in spirit and put themselves into sympathy with the hunted, house-
less, unsociable way of life, that was in its place upon these savage hills. Now, when I am
sad, I like nature to charm me out of my sadness, like David before Saul ; and the thought
of these past ages strikes nothing in me but an unpleasant pity ; so that I can never hit on
the rigHt humour for this sort of landscape, and lose much pleasure in consequence. Still,
even here, if I were only let alone, and time enough were given, I should have all manner of
pleasures, and take many clear and beautiful images away with me when I left. When we
cannot think ourselves into sympathy with the great features of a country, we learn to ignore
them, and put our head among the grass for flowers, or pore, for long times together, over
the changeful current of a stream. We come down to the sermons in stones, when we are
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