Essays in the Art of Writing

t 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 th

story as we go. We become thus, in some sense, a centre of beauty; we are provocative of beauty,[4] 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.[5] Dick Turpin[6] has been my lay figure for many an English lane. And I suppose the Trossachs would hardly be the Trossachs[7] for most tourists if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled it for them with harmonious figures, and brought them thither their 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.[8] 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, houseless, u

the neighbourhood. Reminiscences spring up, like flowers, about uninteresting corners. We forget to some degree the superior loveliness of other places, and fall into a tolerant and sympathetic spirit which is its own reward and justification. Looking back the other day

: there was nothing left to fancy, nothing to expect, nothing to see by the wayside, save here and there an unhomely-looking homestead, and here and there a solitary, spectacled stone-breaker;[12] and you were only accompanied, as you went doggedly forward by the gaunt telegraph-posts and the hum of the resonant wires in the keen sea-wind. To one who has learned to know their song in warm pleasant places by the Mediterranean, it seemed to taunt the country, and make it still bleaker by suggested c

dow. And what a power they have over the colour of the world! How they ruffle the solid woodlands in their passage, and make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! There is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods, with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of their picture is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a gale.[14] There was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed in a country where there were no trees and hardly any shadows, save the passive shadows and clouds or those of rigid houses and walls. But the wind was nevertheless an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you taste more

roar continues,

from an ene

o some seque

er'd place when

ite still and warm; the gale was only in the lower strata of the air, and he had forgotten it in the quiet interior of the church and during his long ascent; and so you may judge of his surprise when, resting his arms on the sunlit balustrade and looking over into the Place far below him, he saw the good people holding on their hats and leaning hard against the wind as they walked. There is something, to my fancy, quite perfect in this little expe

ct for ourselves some pale figure of what life then was. Not so when we are there; when we are there such thoughts come to us only to intensify a contrary impression, and association is turned against itself.[19] I remember walking thither three afternoons in succession, my eyes weary with being set against the wind, and how, dropping suddenly over the edge of the down, I found myself in a new world of warmth and shelter. The wind, from which I had escaped, "as from an enemy,"[20] was seemingly quite local. It carried no clouds with it, and came from such a quarter that it did not trouble the sea within view. The two castles, black and ruinous as the rocks about them, were still distinguishable from these by something more insecure and fantastic in the outline, something that the last storm had left imminent and the next would demolish entirely. It would be difficult to render in words the sense of peace that took possession of me on these three afternoons. It was helped out, as I have said, by the contrast. The shore was battered and bemauled by previous tempests; I had the memory at heart of the insane strife of the pigmies who had erected these two castles and lived in them in mutual distrust and enmity, and knew I had only to put my head out of this little cup of

afternoon sun usurped the ear. The hot, sweet breath of the bank, that had been saturated all day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it into my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature. I

st un luth s

le touche,

y cause I repeat them here. For all I know, they may serve to complete the imp

est impression of peace. I saw the sea to be great and calm; and the earth, in that little corner, was all alive and friendly to me. So, wherever a man is, he will find something to please and pacify him: in the town he will meet pleasant faces of me

O

n (1834-1894), author of the Intellectual Life (1873). Just one year before, Stevenson had had printed in the Portfolio his first contribution to any periodical, Roads. Although The Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places attracted scarcely any attention on its first appearance, and has since become practically forgotten, t

ngland to love nature for its own sake before 1740. Thomas Gray was the first person in Europe who seems to have exhibited a real love of mountains (see his Letters). A study of the development of the app

at is said on this subject in Browning's ext

mark? We're made

them painted, th

red times nor

rage on the road." Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé de Brant?me, (cir. 1534-1614), travelled all over Europe. His works were not published till long after his death, i

cative of beauty. Com

vs. 215

s beauty with

it-put the ca

mple beauty a

the best thi

d you'll find the s

, when you retu

ll were two celebrated Dutch painters. Paul, the younger brother of Matthaeus, was born about 1555, and died in 1626. His development in landscape-painting was remar

ards he became a notorious highwayman, and was finally executed for horse-stealing, 10 April 1739.

to the east of Loch Katrine in Perth, Scotland. Stevenson's statement, "if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not p

sed without trees. Notice the kind of country he begins to describe in t

Biblical story, not with nature, but with music. See I Samuel XVI. 14-23. But in Browning

d the tune all our

e beginning of the second act of As Yo

life exempt fr

trees, books in t

nes and good i

word "sermons" here in the modern sense; he ver

Bronte (1818-1848) sister of the more famous Charlotte Bronte. T

Europe, even in lonely and remote districts, where one may travel for hours without seeing a house, are usually in perfect condition, hard, white and absolutely smooth. The slightest defect or abrasion i

excellent example of what Ruski

e is coloured like f

In Memoria

hat blow the p

. The passage Stevenson quotes is in Book VI

hedral, the great unf

edral, generally regar

orld, was begun in 124

ears after Stevenso

ified with Helios, the Sun-god. The twin towers of Cologne Cathedral are ov

for meals, for assemblies, and for all social requirements. The modern word "dining-hall" preserves the old signif

that Stevenson uses an expression that is not instantly tra

ng to the passage Stevenson has quot

ments. A favorite reflection of Stevenson's,

ring for calm." This passage occurs in the po

ereids under

mbs borne on the

lifted o'er the

ed and starry se

ace their might

tured sea hunge

eaning "weed." Whin is gorse or furze, and the sound

hem first not in the original, but in reading the tales of Poe, for the "two lines of French verse" that "haunted" Stevenson are quoted by Poe

est un lu

le touche

tness." Alluding to the riddle propounded by