The British Isles [antikvár]

No country in the world is richer than Britain in its patchwork of natural beauty. It is a mélange formed by the play of light and shade upon the landscape, by the tones which moss, lichen and fern impart upon mellow stonework, by the placing of spired church or ruined castle within the scene, and by the memories that ha ve been stitched into the fabric of her landscape - into thyme-scented downland and primrose-haunted hedgerow; into silver threads of stream and darkling reed-mere. The landscape of England, Scotland and Wales is one of rich and subtle contrast, where variety is the key to abiding fascination, and upon which each season paints its own freshness - be it the sight of wind-racked elms beyond a cornfield, poppy-studded amid the harvest gold, and shimmering in a summer's haze; the smell of wild hops hanging thickly from autumn bine; a grey winter's landscape, grizzled by sleet, its chill solitude broken only by the harsh call of the crows; or by the first flush of springtide, whose yearly appearance seems to exude the very essence of pastoral verse - When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descetiding blue: that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. With variety goes surprise. Britain is a country of happy surprises, and there is no need to travel far to be pleasantly astonished. In the West, among rounded hills and soft, yielding pasture, one suddenly arrives at the bleak tablelands of Dartmoor and Exmoor; and at Glastonbury there is an unexpected extent of fen whose flatness seems to suggest the landscape of Cambridgeshire. The long green walls of the South and North Downs - with their far-reaching views over the oast-houses, hop fields and orchards of Kent - are equally joyful surprises; the Weald is another of them. East Anglia has a kind of rough heath country of its own, that one never expects to find there but is always delighted to see. After the easy, rolling meadows of the Shires, the dramatic Peak District with its steep scarp never fails to astonish, for it seems to have no business there. Similarly, to the north, there are remnants of the Ice Age in the flowers and shrubs of Teesdale - Alpine gentians and juniper -whilst a short distance away drifts of bluebells, wood anemones and wild garhc carpet the primeval woodlands that crowd the vales. Another characteristic of the British landscape is its exquisite moderation -bom of a compromise between wildness and tameness. Here the hand of nature and the works of man harmonize: the hedges, the wooden fences, even the low stone walls that bind the northern fells, all have been gently subdued by nature until at last they might have been natural growths themselves, like the mosses that cover their wood and stone. Indeed, man has no need to be ashamed of the extent of his handiwork - where in Devon he built his thatched cottages of colour-wash cob, where in Herefordshire he used his timber and plaster to such striking 'magpie-like' effect, or where in the grim north he built his grey peel towers as defence against raiders from across the border. It is no accident either that the works of our earliest ancestors - such as the tall stones of Callernish, the 'Druids' Circle at Keswick, or any mighty prehistoric earthwork like Maiden Castle or Uffington Hill Fort - stand in surroundings of peerless loveliness. Thus are built (at a later age) the Abbey of Tintem on the Wye, Dryburgh in the arm of the Tweed, Rievaulx in the green cup of the Hambledon Hills, and Fountains Abbey nestled amongst trees and rocks. Of similar merit are Durham Cathedral, set high on its rock promontory overhanging the Wear, Lincoln overlooking half a county, and Ely poised triumphantly above the Fens. Nor was this sense of beauty lost with the first flush of enthusiasm - that material prosperity did not blunt the medieval mind can be seen at a glance around any Cotswold village, where houses have an irregularity and colouring that make them fit snugly into the landscape, as though they were as much a piece of natural history as the trees that shade them. Such landscapes are a comfort to man, yet the countryside has not relinquished all of its ancient savagery and power - the vast moors, the mountains and the cruel seascapes still hold him in awe. The enormous variety of countryside to be found in Britain is what makes a journey through its landscape so infinitely rewarding. In the succeeding chapters