Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/61

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INDIFFERENCE TO SCENERY.
31

citizen makes Loch Lomond his wash-pot, and throws his shoe over Ben Nevis,"[1] the old man may easily be mocked for his indifference to scenery. But the elderly traveller of our times, who whirled along "in a well-appointed four-horse coach," indicates the beauties of nature to his companions, and utters exclamations of delight, as from time to time he takes his cigar from his lips, might have felt as little enthusiasm as Johnson, had he had, like him, to cross Skye and Mull on horseback, by paths so narrow that each rider had to go singly, and so craggy that constant care was required.

LOCH LOMOND.

The scenery in which he took most delight was the park-lands of southern and midland England.

"Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride,
And brighter streams than fam'd Hydaspes glide.
There all around the gentlest breezes stray,
There gentle music melts on every spray;
Creation's mildest charms are there combin'd,
Extremes are only in the master's mind."[2]

"Sweet Auburn" would have been dearer to him than all the wilds of the Highlands. But Auburn scenery he did not find even in the Lowlands. Had Goldsmith passed his life in Ayrshire or even in "pleasant Teviotdale," the Deserted Village would never have been written. Burns had never seen an Auburn, nor even that simpler rural beauty which was so dear to Wordsworth. No "lovely cottage in the guardian nook" had "stirred him deeply." He knew nothing of the sacredness of

  1. Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 239.
  2. Goldsmith's Traveller, l. 319.