In another she addresses the South Downs, Ah, hills beloved, where once a happy child, Your beechen shades, your turfs, your flowers among, Mrs. Smith's life was a most unhappy one, and she found her real comfort in Nature. Mrs. Radcliffe's "Romance of a Forest" (1791) appeared two years before "The Old Manor House," and "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794) one year after. In these novels by Mrs. Radcliffe the romantic landscape was presented in its complete form. Except in the most rapid parts of the story there is greater stress on the scenery than on the characters. Emily, Adeline, and Clara seldom indulge in an emotion without first describing the dell or glen or forest glade, to which they have wandered. They are never too deeply agitated to observe the glories of sunrise and sunset. A wide view can soothe any grief. This susceptibility of the heroines to Nature is represented as one of their greatest charms. Mrs. Radcliffe had never seen most of the scenes she described. She had never been in France, Italy, or Switzerland. The landscapes she gives us do not bear the stamp of reality. They are ideal compositions but they are never merely an inventory nor are they impossible combinations. Though not exactly true, they can be read with pleasure because the details are blended into harmonious and lovely pictures which seem to have caught the actual spirit of the places described. She delighted in all kinds of Nature, peaceful or wild, but her especial pleasure was in those phases of Nature ignored by the classicists. Mountains, the ocean, the phenomena of the sky, and deep forests, are chiefly dwelt upon in her descriptions. Her love of the ocean is really a new element in the general attitude toward Nature. Painting, poetry, and fiction had up to this time put little stress on the ocean, but Mrs. Radcliffe in frequent passages shows that her own feeling was that of Adeline, of whom she says, "Of all the grand objects which nature had exhibited the ocean supplied her with the most sublime admiration. She loved to wander alone by its shore." It is, however, in the representation of forest scenes that Mrs. Radcliffe's most effective work is done. The wild and terrifying influence of the dark woods that cover the Apennines, all the dim and shadowy loveliness, all the mystery and suggestiveness of the romantic forest about the ruined abbey, reappear in her descriptions. Her feeling toward mountains is one of almost extravagant delight in their vastness, their wildness, their remoteness, and inaccessibility. She is deeply sensitive to all the "goings on" in the sky. She catches with accuracy the most ethereal, delicate, evanescent effects. It is especially mystery and remoteness that she loves, hence night, moonlight, and stars attract her. Closely connected with her pleasure in the sky is her artistic openness to all aërial transformations. In her wide views over land and sea, in vistas caught through forest glades, in pictures of twilight or dawn, of sunrise or sunset, she seldom fails to note the quick shiftings of color and form, the interplay of light and shade, the dimness, the transparency, the luminosity, resulting from atmospheric changes. She looked upon Nature not only, as she said of one of her own characters, "with the eye of an artist, but with the raptures of a poet." The effect of Nature on man in soothing his grief, modifying his passions, and elevating his character is everywhere insisted upon. As Adeline's eyes "wandered through the romantic glades that opened into the forest her heart was gladdened." Through the melancholy boughs the evening twilight, which still colored the air, "diffused a solemnity that vibrated in thrilling sensations upon the hearts of the travellers. . . . . The tranquillity of the scene, which autumn had touched with her sweetest tints, softened her mind to a tender kind of melancholy." The Alps "filled her mind with sublime emotions." The solitary grandeur of these scenes both "assisted and soothed the melancholy of her heart." The stillness and total seclusion of the scene, the stupendous mountains, the gloomy grandeur of the woods, "diffuse a sacred enthusiasm over the mind and awaken sensations truly sublime." Such a scene "fills the soul with emotions of indescribable awe, and seems to lift it to a nobler nature." "It was in the tranquil observation of beautiful nature" that Clara's mind recovered its tone. The moonlight on the sea seemed to "diffuse peace." Twilight sometimes "inspires the mind with pensive tenderness," sometimes "exalts it to sublime meditations." The Alps inspire reflections that "soften and elevate the heart and fill it with the certainty of a present God." Such expressions were repeated with an insistence that becomes monotonous. There is, indeed, an element of sameness in all the descriptions, an effect the more tiresome because they are so numerous. So large a descriptive element would hardly be admitted in a novel today unless justified by some remarkable power of word-painting. Mrs. Radcliffe's descriptions would doubtless invite the modern reader, at least after a steady progress through four or five volumes, to do some judicious skipping. But thought of as in her own day, Mrs. Radcliffe must always rank as a discoverer, so new and fresh was this element she brought into fiction. As is usual with discoverers she overworked her idea. She was not a great genius. She was often weakly sentimental. But she had a genuine and most ardent love of Nature, and, when at her best, had exceptional descriptive power. Her fame and her influence on succeeding literature rest on these characteristics. х In "Fiction," as in "Travels" and "Poetry," there is the transfer of interest from what man does or is, to the powers of untrammeled Nature. The new spirit here, as in "Travels," is late in finding adequate expression. We can hardly put any real beginnings of it earlier than "John Buncle" (1756-66). Even after that, development is spasmodic and slow. In most of the novels and romances we find the romantic impulse to see strange lands, but men and manners absorb the attention of the travelers. Mrs. Radcliffe's fugitives in "The Romance of the Forest," the travelers in "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and Mrs. Brooke's soldier in "Emily Montague" are the first to make much of the scenery through which they pass. In general we may say that novels had little to do with Nature, and romances much. This may account for the lack of reality in the descriptions. There is nothing in any work of fiction at all correspondent to the temperate, truthful, clear-cut work of Cowper and Burns. There is practically nothing of the bald realism of John Scott, whose poetry was written rather in the scientific temper with which most travels were undertaken. Nor, on the other hand, is there anything of the visionary, mystical power of Blake. The best use of Nature in fiction is more akin to the emotionalism of Beattie. Except for Mrs. Radcliffe, and she came late in the century, fiction contributed less to bring about the new attitude toward Nature than did any other form of art expression. CHAPTER IV TRAVELS It is impossible to do more here than merely to sketch the possibilities in a "History of the Tour and the Guide Book," because the mass of material to be gone over is so great. Pinkerton's "Catalogue of Voyages and Travels," published in 1814, gives over 4,500 books. It is so elaborately tabulated that it is not easy to use, but it is possible to cull from its voluminous pages a fairly compendious list of such travels as were published in England in the eighteenth century. In this list there are about 360 books. Of these 360 books all but 84 are travels outside of Great Britain and Ireland. Their distribution through the century indicates a steady growth of interest in foreign lands, for nearly half of the English accounts of travels in other countries belong in the last quarter of the century. But these foreign tours, however interesting in themselves, are outside the present field of inquiry. They were undertaken usually with some definite purpose. Antiquities, curiosities, minerals; laws, manners, customs; utilitarian possibilities-these were the leading subjects of inquiry. In the titles such phrases as, "relating chiefly to the history, antiquities, and geography;" "remarks on Characters and Manners;" "chiefly relative to the knowledge of mankind, industry, literature, and natural history;" "with an account of the most memorable sieges;" "containing a great variety of geographical, topographical and political observations;" "containing specially a description of fortified towns;" "containing a Picture of the Country, the Manners, and the Actual Government," are of constant recurrence and serve to mark out the general scope of these |