It seems to me that, as matters stand at present

§ 1. SUPPOSING then the preceding conclusions correct, respecting the grounds and component elements of the pleasure which the moderns take in landscape, we have here to consider what are the probable or usual effects of this pleasure. Is it a safe or a seductive one? May we wisely boast of it, and unhesitatingly indulge it? or is it rather a sentiment to be despised when it is slight, and condemned when it is intense; a feeling which disinclines us to labor, and confuses us in thought; a joy only to the inactive and the visionary, incompatible with the duties of life, and the accuracies of reflection? decorative painting
§ 2. It seems to me that, as matters stand at present, there is considerable ground for the latter opinion. We saw, in the preceding chapter, that our love of nature had been partly forced upon us by mistakes in our social economy, and led to no distinct issues of action or thought. And when we look to Scott—the man who feels it most deeply—for some explanation of its effect upon him, we find a curious tone of apology (as if for involuntary folly) running through his confessions of such sentiment, and a still more curious inability to define, beyond a certain point, the character of this emotion. He has lost the company of his friends among the hills, and turns to these last for comfort. He says, "there is a pleasure in the pain" consisting in such thoughts frames for oil paintings

"As oft awake
By lone St. Mary's silent lake;"

but, when we look for some definition of these thoughts, all that we are told is, that they compose

"A mingled sentiment
Of resignation and content!"

a sentiment which, I suppose, many people can attain to on the loss of their friends, without the help of lakes or mountains; while Wordsworth definitely and positively affirms that thoughthas nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that though, in his youth, the cataract and wood "haunted him like a passion," it was without the help of any "remoter charm, by thought supplied." modern abstract oil painting