Rural landscape

“ Those little, unique fields, defined by lines and shapes unknown to geometry, are going out of the rural landscape. And when they are gone, they will be missed more than the amateurs of agricultural artistry imagine at the present moment. ”

“ As we proceeded southward the picturesqueness of the scenery increased, now winding through valleys or creeping over mountain passes. Wherever the valleys widen into plains there are seen numberless rural homes, substantial and attractive, surrounded by [Pg 264] fertile fields, cultivated gardens, and large fruit-orchards,—the latter leafless at this season, though the general foliage of the country is evergreen. Thrifty gorse hedges are prominent everywhere, blazing with yellow blossoms which lighted up and warmed the landscape like sunshine. ”

“ Still flat, however, unenclosed, without hedgerows, clumps of trees, straying cattle, and the numerous rural peculiarities which give life and variety and interest to an English landscape, almost a single glance suffices to take in all they exhibit of the picturesque, and to satisfy the merely superficial tourist. ”

“ Certainly there is not much to boast of among us in the way of architecture as yet, either in town or country; but our rural buildings are only seen amid the orchards and fields of the farms, or surrounded by the trees and gardens of the villages, so that their defects are, perhaps, less striking, relieved, as they generally are, by an air of thrift and comfort, and softened by the pleasing features of the surrounding landscape. ”

“ Rural Scenery in Southern England.
Another marked difference between this country and most parts of ours is the extraordinary finish of the landscape, due to scantiness of forests, absence of undergrowth, thoroughness of tillage, and especially the luxuriance and smoothness of the turf. The quiet beauty of rural England has a perpetual charm. ”

“ The hedges, the trees dappling the road with shade and sunshine, the cottages, the village greens and ponds, the village itself through which we pass with a fleeting interest in its life, the glimpses down side lanes into their infinite suggestions of light and colour—these are sights repeated in the endless variety of nature and rural life, and of which the changeful pleasure is unending. ”

“ The ruder nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the park. ”

“ It is benignly ordained that green fields, clear blue skies, running streams of pure water, rich groves and woods, orchards, and all the ordinary varieties of rural nature should find an easy way to the affections of all men. ”

“ See the beautiful plains, the prairies beneath us, one great carpet of cultivation,—the fields of grain, the yellow wheat, the verdant maize, the flocks, the herds, the meadow, the woodland, forming beautiful and defined figures in its texture, while the villages in glistening whiteness, are scattered, like patches of snow, in every part of the landscape; and hark! in that indistinct and mellow music we hear the bell slowly tolling from yonder slender spire. ”

“ The wide valley of the river here presented a pleasing alternation of heavy forests, with small but luxuriant meadows, affording a profuse supply of grass for our horses. The broad hills, swelling gently one above another as they recede from the river, are diversified with nearly the same intermixture of field and forest as in the most highly cultivated portions of the eastern states. Herds of bisons, wild horses, elk and deer, are seen quietly grazing in these extensive and fertile pastures; the habitations and the works of man alone seem wanting to complete the picture of rural abundance. ”

“ To-day, with its cultivated fields and with just enough woodland left to vary the monotony that characterises the treeless plains, as we looked across the country, really park like in appearance, we could almost fancy that we were passing through some of the rural districts of Old England. ”

“ What a calm and basking sunshine lies on the green landscape. Look round,—all is richness, and beauty, and glory. Those tall elms which surround the churchyard, letting the grey tower get but a passing glimpse of the river, and that other magnificent arcade of similar trees which stretch up the side of the same fair stream,—how they hang in the most verdant and luxuriant masses of foliage! ”

“ Far and near are lovely white villages nestling under elms, in the heart of fields and meadows; and everywhere the long, narrow, accurately divided farms stretch downward to the river-shores. The best roads on the continent make this beauty and richness accessible; each little village boasts some natural wonder in stream, or lake, or cataract: and this landscape, magnificent beyond any in eastern America, is historical and interesting beyond all others. ”

“ In our day these warm and fertile slopes give place to cultivated farms, from whence arise the rural sounds of flock and herd so grateful to the spirit, and that primitive blast of horn, winding itself into a thousand echoes, the signal for the ingathering of a household. ”

“ The corn-fields, the vineyards clothing the uplands, the woods that varied the landscape, and the meandering river that gave it light and life, were all in their fairest summer dress. Plenty and peace brooded over a happy land. From a traveller in a diligence no more detailed description of city, village, or scenery, can be expected. ”

“ The lover of country life who looks upon rural objects in the true spirit, and, for the first time surveys the cultivated portions of the United States, will be struck with the incongruous appearance and style of our farm houses and their contiguous buildings ”

“ Our fields are divided by wooden fences; wooden bridges cross our rivers; our village streets and highways are being paved with wood; the engines that carry us on our way by land and by water are fed with wood; the rural dwellings without and within, their walls, their floors, stairways, and roofs are almost wholly of wood; and in this neighborhood the fires that burn on our household hearths are entirely the gift of the living forest. ”

“ It is surrounded by fine woods and pleasure-grounds, laid out in the formal style, which is still the characteristic of French landscape-gardening. Nothing can be more beautiful than the surrounding scenery, the winding river with its vineyards hanging in terraces from the opposite heights, the village reposing beneath sun-lit hills, while corn-fields, pasture-land, and cattle grazing, convey the most pleasing ideas of the comfort of those who dwell upon this luxuriant soil. ”

“ Physical Types.—To understand the continually changing rural life of the present, it is necessary to examine into the physical characteristics of the country districts, the elements of the population, the functions of the rural community, and its social institutions.
The physical characteristics have a large part in determining occupations and in fashioning social life. A natural harbor, especially if it is at the mouth of a river, seems destined by nature for a centre of commerce, as the falls of a swift-flowing stream indicate the location of a manufacturing plant. ”

“ It may look out over broad savannas, cultivated fields, and shining waters; it may nestle amid its own quiet woods and lawn in its own selected shade and retirement, or lord it over an extensive park, ranged by herds and flocks, meandered by its own stream, spreading anon into the placid lake, or rushing swiftly over its own narrow bed—an independent, substantial, convenient, and well-conditioned home, standing upon its own broad acres, and comporting with the character and standing of its occupant, among his friends and neighbors. ”

“ Having penetrated the range of hills by means of this grand improvement, one emerges into a broad level country, and passes through an agricultural district which is under a high state of cultivation, beautified here and there by pleasant rural residences, gardens, and wooded reaches. The land is divided into convenient lots and separated by tall hedges of gorse, blooming in all its gaudy yellow splendor, and impregnating the atmosphere with a sweetness which belied the season, seeming rather to belong to the balmy days of early spring. ”

“ At length the hills are reached, and the lowland heat is tempered by mountain freshness. The scene that may be beheld from almost any elevation is always beautiful, and sometimes grand. Forest, of course, prevails; yet with a glass, and often by the unaided eye, gentle hills, swelling from the wooded landscape, may be seen covered with native huts, whose neighborhood is checkered with patches of sward and cultivation, and inclosed by massive belts of primeval wildness. ”

“ It was natural that newcomers from the Old World should have been impressed, and often unfavorably impressed, by the oddness of things here. Rural sights to them had hitherto been sights of trim meadows bordered by neat hedgerows, of well-cultivated fields and comfortable farmsteads, or of stately homes set in fair gardens and far-reaching parks of magnificently-spreading trees. ”

“ The forest has been cleared away, the corn-field and the orchard have supplanted the wild grass and the bush, and towns and villages have arisen as if by magic. You may hear the lowing of herds where, a few years before, you would have trembled at the wild whoop of the savage, and the stillness of that once solitary shore is broken by the sound of wheels and the busy hum of commerce. ”

“ Now the cars sped through the charming country of rural England, with its ever-changing scenes, than which there is nothing more beautiful and peaceful. Cattle browsed upon the hillocks, tiny hamlets were spotlessly neat and orderly, the 72 roads were edged with trimmed hedges, and even in the woods, where wild-plants grew, there was no débris to be found. ”

“ Yet, in light soils, their shade is grateful to the highway traveler, and not, perhaps, injurious to the crops of the adjoining field; and when of proper kinds, they add grace and beauty to the domain in which they stand. 130 We do not, therefore, indiscriminately recommend them, but leave it to the discretion of the farmer, to decide for himself, having seen estates equally pleasant with, and without trees on the roadside. Nothing, however, can be more beautiful than a clump of trees in a pasture-ground, with a herd, or a flock beneath them, near the road ”

“ Along the river banks were fertile plains, converted into regularly laid out fields and gardens, that for thousands of years had yielded a full harvest from their inexhaustible richness, and numerous cottages, some with tiled roofs shining in the sunlight, others with only a covering of straw, diversified the landscape. ”

“ The fields which border this quiet bit of road are among the oldest in our neighborhood, belonging to one of the first farms cleared near the village; they are in fine order, and to look at them, one might readily believe these lands had been under cultivation for ages. But such is already very much the character of the whole valley; a stranger moving along the highway looks in vain for any striking signs of a new country; as he passes from farm to farm in unbroken succession, the aspect of the whole region is smiling and fruitful. ”

“ In rural life, however tame and lonely, the home is not merely a few square feet hedged in by brick walls, but the whole wide countryside: the barns, the fields, the woods, the orchards, the animals wild and domesticated, the outlook over hill and valley—these all constitute the farmer’s home. ”

“ It is to the heart of one of these models of rural beauty that we now invite the attention of the reader. The immediate location of the village was in a sort of valley, close within the verge of an immense forest, and surrounded by an intervening underwood, which Nature had fashioned as a sort of defensive barrier. ”

“ Heavy night dews there feed the wild flowers that sicken in the nerveless pallor of the summer sea-air, and fresh water runs swiftly from mountain springs. Sometimes they are narrow and hidden valleys, in whose depth even villages could scarce find a home, did they not climb the hill-sides on either hand, and camp out, as it were, upon the meadows or among the vineyards. Or, again, they are wider, so that little towns have been built within them—quaint towns with tall houses and taller campanile, at whose side there flows, perhaps, a shallow river, brown upon its shingly bed. ”

“ Unfortunately, we find it difficult to share this enthusiasm for rural life. You see, we worked on a few farms when we were a wild lad just out of college—we were seeking inspiration in the soil. So we know just how a farm looks and smells in the spring when they are enriching the ground. ”

“ From the shore a low promontory pushes itself into the water, and on it stands a white village, with a parish church rising in the midst of it, having enclosures, cornfields, and meadows, green as an emerald, which, with trees, and hedges, and cattle, fill up the whole space from the edge of the water, and just opposite to you is a large farmhouse at the bottom of a steep, smooth lawn, embosomed in old woods, which climb half way up the mountain sides, and discover above a broken line of crags that crown the scene. ”

“ Fields covered with corn, turneps, beans, potatoes, hemp, or productions of a similar nature; meadows, pasture lands, hop grounds, orchards, and other parts of English culture; interwoven with common hedges, or blended with accidental plantations, require little, if any assistance from Art, to be more picturesque than lawns the most curiously dotted with clumps; and villages, country churches, farm-houses or cottages, when placed with judgement, and designed with taste, enrich and adorn a landscape as well as more expensive structures. ”