Rustic

“ The rustic simplicity of the figures of the husbandman with his winnowing-shovel, the threshing-floor exposed to every wind, the stored wheat, the rootless, lifeless, worthless chaff, and the fierce fire in some corner of the autumn field where it is utterly burned up—needs no comment. ”

“ Picturesquely visible among the trees of a grove appears a small, rustic cottage, curiously interwoven of bark, vines, boughs, leaves, and flowers—a building which seems to have grown from the conditions and the colors of the grove. ”

“ FOREIGN LOAN-WORDS We have often been told, or we have read in newspaper reviews and suchlike works, that the rustic vernacular is indigenous to the soil, mostly raw material in the rough, but entirely a native product. ”

“ Sometimes the land is cleared, and he finds himself by the homestead of a forest farm, and remarks the buildings, distinguished not only by their neatness, but the propriety of their rustic architecture. ”

“ You hear the light clap of a gate, and presently beneath the glimpsing trees, you see some rustic personage pursuing this path, and going unconsciously past you as you stand amongst the thickets—some old man with heavy pace, or village girl hurrying along as if those woods were still haunted by dubious things. ”

“ THE PAINTING OF HUMOROUS ANECDOTE
At the very time when the East attracted the French Romanticists, the German and Belgian painters discovered the rustic. Romanticism, driven into strange and tropical regions by its disgust of a sluggish, colourless and inglorious age, now planted a firm foot upon native soil. Amid rustics there was to be found a conservative type of life which perpetuated old usages and picturesque costume.
It is not easy for a dilettante to enter into sympathetic relationship with these early pictures of peasant life. ”

“ The writer of a book entitled The Folk and their Word-Lore tells of ‘the rustic etymologer’ who explained that the reason why partridges are so called is ‘because ... they love to lie between the furrows of ploughed land, and so part the ridges’. ”

“ Maud Muller on a summer's day, Raked the meadow sweet with hay. Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic-health. ”

“ The whole plan and conception of human society is based on the rustic home and the needs and characteristics of the agricultural family. There have been gipsies, wanderers, knaves, knights-errant and adventurers, no doubt, but the settled permanent rustic home and the tenure of land about it, and the hens and the cow, have constituted the fundamental reality of the whole scene. ”

“ So a strip of primeval forest on the one side, and rolling level prairie on the other, still came up to the base of the hill, whereon they had built certain solid houses, which a second generation had beautified and improved with modern taste, but which still retained their old honesty of foundation and wholesome rustic space. ”

“ Formerly no attention was bestowed upon the rustic population; every contemporary considered their manners and customs so well known that it never occurred to any one to write upon the subject, and se we have nothing to help us to some knowledge of them except popular ballads and tales, wooden buildings, and some of their home-industry. ”

“ And when these cultivated cranks say that rustics do not talk of Nature in an appreciative way, they really mean that they do not talk in a bookish way. They do not talk bookishly about clouds or stones, or pigs or slugs, or horses or anything you please. ”

“ And are all our experiences of the English climate those of gloom? Are there no glorious sunsets, no summer evenings, balmy as our dreams of heaven, no long sunny days of summer, no dewy mornings, whose freshness brings with it ideas of earth in its youth, and the glades of Paradise trod by the fair feet of Eve? Have we no sweet memories of youth and friendship, in which such hours, such days, in which fields of harvest, hay-harvest and corn-harvest, with all their rejoicing rustic companies, lie in the sunshine? ”

“ For in these parts it so happens that the rustics have their customary walks and promenades as well as the city dwellers, to which they resort at leisure, only with this great difference that their pleasure grounds cost nothing to maintain and that these are finer in every way, since Nature alone has made them. ”

“ my dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content! ”

“ His Pictures of other Kinds.—The other pictures here are devoted to his villagers, drinking, playing bowls, dancing, singing, and fighting. A Landscape, with a rustic house, shows a gardener standing, spade in hand, talking to a woman with a child on her lap. On the left, on the ground, are some vegetables, also pots and other household utensils. ”

“ Wearied rustics, exhausted by the toils of the day, are enjoying a sweet and tranquil repose. No direful visions appal their happy souls, nor terrific ghosts of quondam hours stand arrayed before them. Every sense is lost in the oblivious stream. ”

“ And since they do all this, not as labor but diversion, one must conclude that these rustics, despite of what has often been claimed to the contrary, are lovers of nature, aside from the strictly utilitarian view of it. ”

“ While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; ”

“ Ever and anon he passes by some dwelling where the charms of culture have been added to the charms of Nature. By kind treatment the grass-plat before the door has become a refreshing piece of verdure. By careful pruning and training the trees on the lawn have become objects of beauty, and cast their graceful shadows over the velvety greensward beneath. The woodbine tastefully trained over the porch, the flower-bed in the yard brilliant with flowers, and the garden and the fruit orchard in the field, all tend to cheer and sanctify human life in such an abode. ”

“ If one imagines, between these luxuriantly outstretched meads, between these joyously scattered groves, all land adapted for tillage, excellently prepared, verdant, and ripening, and the best and richest spots marked by hamlets and farmhouses, and this great and immeasurable plain, prepared for man, like a new paradise, bounded far and near by mountains partly cultivated, partly overgrown with woods, he will then conceive the rapture with which I blessed my fate, that it had destined me, for some time, so beautiful a dwelling-place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ High mountains, snow-capped above, pine-clad lower down, descended by grassy slopes into rich pasture-lands, traversed by innumerable streams, and dotted over with those cottages of framed wood, which, with their ornamented gables and quaint galleries, are the most picturesque peasant houses in existence. ”

“ The homes are simple, humble and pastoral. An ancient house of turf and stone, an enclosed mowing patch, the sheep folds and the byre, a scanty garden where a few hardy vegetables rejoice in the long, long day. ”

“ Where Nature’s pastures, rich and amply broad,
Waving in full abundance, seem to mock
The deepest schemes and boldest efforts of
The cultivators of the eastern soil;
I grew incredulous that Nature’s dress
Should be so rich, and so domestic, and
So beautiful, without the touch of Art ”

“ Hedges, thick and green, on each side of the road, with wild woodbine twisting all over them, and loading the air with perfumes, were the appropriate frame-work of rich fields, waving with golden crops, fragrant with new-mown hay, or filled with pasturing cattle, while here and there they enclosed a little garden full of flowers, or were broken by the prettiest cottages in all the world, neatly whitewashed, and trimly thatched, and planted about with white and red roses, clambering over the windows, mounting to the eaves, and even straggling among the straw, to the ridge of the roof. ”

“ Every fragment of rock is finished in its effect, tinted with thousands of pale lichens and fresh mosses; every pine trunk is warm with the life of various vegetation; every grassy bank glowing with mellowed colour, and waving with delicate leafage. How, then, can the contrast be otherwise than painful, between this perfect loveliness, and the dead, raw, lifeless surface of the deal boards of the cottage. ”

“ All, therefore, is not left to Nature. Nor must we forget the gardens: prettily laid out; enriched by rare trees, with vases and statues judiciously [60] intermixed; and, especially, a grove of orange trees, with several summer-houses in pleasant nooks, where cedars, magnolias, cork trees, and other trees, supply shade and shelter from rain and sun. Art has here been aiding Nature, but its influence is felt rather than seen; those to whom the “grounds” owe much seem to have been ever mindful that their profuse and natural luxuriance needed few checks of the pruner and trainer. ”

“ If you could root out the New Forest, you might possibly get as well supplied with timber from some other quarter, but where would you find the landscape painter such a treasury of sylvan and picturesque beauty, such delicious nooks and hollows, and fair streams winding under forest boughs? Where such groupings and endless variety of foliage and forest stems? Where such lights and shades and colours as nature there diffuses over her own regions in the everlasting circulation of the seasons ”

“ On the dry, smooth-shaven lawn, outside, the shadows are lengthening, stretching themselves indolently as though weary from all the hide-and-seek they have been playing, since early dawn, in the nooks and corners of the quaint old garden. ”

“ There were all the necessaries of life; the wealthy buying the more palatable things for their tables, the poor stopping to look greedily upon a handful of grain.
Here was a yard neatly fenced with reeds, and a clean, snug-looking cottage, the clay walls nicely polished, a shutter of reeds placed against the low, well-rounded door, a cool shade for the daily household work, a fine spreading tree, with its deep shadow during the hottest hours of the day, or a beautiful specimen unfolding its large featherlike leaves, or the tall date tree waving over the whole. ”

“ The whole surface of the lawn that sloped from the cottage to the river was densely crowded with every age, from the oldest to the very infancy; with all conditions, from the well-clad peasant to the humblest ‘tramper’ of the highroads. ”

“ I love to see the smooth dry track, winding away in easy curves, along some green slope, to the churchyard, to the embosomed cottage, or to the forest grange. It is to me an object of certain inspiration. It seems to invite one from noise and publicity, into the heart of solitude and of rural delights. It beckons the imagination on, through green and whispering corn fields, through the short but verdant pasture; the flowery mowing-grass; the odorous and sunny hayfield; the festivity of harvest ”

“ But Nature paints for all the world, poor and rich together: and while, therefore, she thus adorns the innermost rocks of her hills, to tempt your investigation, or indulge your luxury,—she paints, far more carefully, the outsides of the hills, which are for the eyes of the shepherd and the ploughman. I spoke just now of the effect in the roofs of our villages of their purple slates: but if the slates are beautiful even in their flat and formal rows on house-roofs, much more are they beautiful on the rugged crests and flanks of their native mountains. ”

“ Here was the great living-room with its hearth, where the life of the home centered. Without was the wonderful rolling country with all its majesty of hill, whence he saw the crystal mountains to north and the blue lure of the sea to eastward, with all its gentle delights of ravines where brooks laughed, and meadows and swamps where they slipped peacefully along, mirroring the sky, watering all wild flowers and offering refuge to all wild creatures. Within this wide circle, with the house its core and the hearth its shrine, [19] revolved the homely, cheerful, whole-hearted life of the farm. ”

“ A wood surrounds the house, through which paths are cut in every direction. It is, for this new country, a large and handsome dwelling; but round it are its barns and farm yard, with cattle and poultry. These, however, in the framework of wood, have a very picturesque and pleasing effect. There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the aspect of things as gives a feeling of freedom, not of confusion. ”

“ All within the limits is a green and beautiful expanse made up of copse and lea, of level meadow breadths and cattle-dappled pastures, that rejoice in the warm sunshine, with little hamlets and villages and shady lanes, old manor houses and churches—the monuments of the past mingling with the habitations of contemporary life and activity. ”

“ The dim impervious forests were all hewn down and converted into fruitful fields, where the rich grain was ripening. Amidst orchards of fruit-trees, full of blossom, arose the straw-thatched roofs of thriving villages, and the curling smoke peacefully ascended from many a chimney ”

“ In the garden itself the excess of color is as cloying as its surfeit of scent pouring from the thousands of open flower cups; we long for green hedges, even for scanter bloom and for fainter fragrance. It is not a garden to live in, as are our box-bordered gardens of the North, our cheerful cottage borders, and our well-balanced Italian gardens, so restful to the eye; it is a garden to look at and wonder at. ”

“ The cottage gardens are ceremonious and bright with phlox and sunflower and hollyhock; the orchards are yellow with apple, and of all sunburnt hues with plum; in the descending lane you wade in a world of ragwort, knapweed and Canterbury-bell, with your head in the world of honeysuckle; and, parting the hazel branches to seek their branching clusters, you see now and then in the valley a farmhouse on whose walls and roofs the hues of fruit and flower all meet harmoniously. ”