If called upon to propose any summer's journey for a young English
traveller, (and it is a call often made with reference to continental
tours,) we might reasonably suggest the coasts of Great Britain, as
affording every kind of various interest, which can by possibility be
desired. Such a scheme would include the ports and vast commercial
establishments of Liverpool, Bristol, Greenock, Leith, Newcastle, and
Hull; the great naval stations of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Chatham, and
Milford; the magnificent estuaries of the Clyde and Forth, and of the
Bristol Channel, not surpassed by any in Europe; the wild and romantic
coasts of the Hebrides and Western Highlands; the bold shore of North
Wales; the Menai, Conway, and Sunderland bridges; the gigantic works of
the Caledonian Canal and Plymouth Breakwater; and numerous other
objects, which it is beyond our purpose and power to enumerate. It
cannot be surely too much to advise, that Englishmen, who have only
slightly and partially seen these things, should subtract something from
the length or frequency of their continental journeys, and give the time
so gained to a survey of their own country's wonders of nature and art.
To the agriculturist, and to the lover of rural scenery, England offers
much that is remarkable. The rich alluvial plains of continents may
throw out a more profuse exuberance and succession of crops; but we
doubt whether agriculture, as an art, has anywhere (except in Flanders
and Tuscany alone) reached the same perfection as in the less fertile
soils of the Lothians, Northumberland, and Norfolk. Still more peculiar
is the rural scenery of England, in the various and beautiful landscape
it affords--in the undulating surface--the greenness of the
enclosures--the hamlets and country churches--and the farm houses and
cottages dispersed over the face of the country, instead of being
congregated into villages, as in France and Italy. We might select
Devonshire, Somersetshire, Herefordshire, and others of the midland
counties, as pre-eminent in this character of beauty, which, however, is
too familiar to our daily observation to make it needful to expatiate
upon it.
Nor will our limits allow us to dwell upon that bolder form of natural
scenery which we possess in the Highlands of Scotland, in Wales,
Cumberland, and Derbyshire, and which entitles us to speak of this
island as rich in landscape of the higher class. In the scale of
objects, it is true that no comparison can exist between the mountain
scenery of Britain, and that of many parts of the continent of Europe.
But it must be remembered, that magnitude is not essential to beauty;
and that even sublimity is not always to be measured by yards and feet.
A mountain may be loftier, or a lake longer and wider, without any gain
to that picturesque effect, which mainly depends on form, combination,
and colouring. Still we do not mean to claim in these points any sort of
equality with the Alps, Apennines, or Pyrenees; or to do more than
assert that, with the exception of these, the more magnificent memorials
of nature's workings on the globe, our own country possesses as large a
proportion of fine scenery as any part of the continent of Europe.--_Q.
Rev._
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