556 PRÆTERITA-III

I am afraid of being diverted too far from Solway Moss, and must ask the reader to look back to my description of the Spirit of music in the Spanish chapel at Florence (“The Strait Gate,” pages 134 and 135¹), remembering only this passage at the beginning of it, “After learning to reason, you will learn to sing: for you will want to. There is much reason for singing in the sweet world, when one thinks rightly of it. None for grumbling, provided always you have entered in at the strait gate. You will sing all along the road then, in a little while, in a manner pleasant for other people to hear.”

82. I will only return to Scott for one half page more, in which he has contrasted with his utmost masterhood the impressions of English and Scottish landscape. Few scenes of the world have been oftener described, with the utmost skill and sincerity of authors,² than the view from Richmond Hill sixty years since; but none can be compared with the ten lines in The Heart of Midlothian, edition of 1830, page 374:-

“A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained, and unbounded, through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on his bosom a hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole.

“As the Duke of Argyle looked on this inimitable landscape, his thoughts naturally reverted to his own more grand and scarce less beautiful domains of Inveraray. ‘This is a fine scene,’ he said to his companion, curious perhaps to draw out her sentiments; ‘we have nothing like it in Scotland.’ ‘It’s braw rich feeding for the cows, and they have a fine breed o’cattle here,’ replied Jeanie; ‘but I like just as weel to look at the craigs of Arthur’s Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them, as at a’ thae muckle trees.’”

83. I do not know how often I have already vainly dwelt on the vulgarity and vainness of the pride in mere

¹ [Ruskin refers to the first edition of Mornings in Florence: see now § 101 (Vol. XXIII. p. 393).]

² [As, for instance, by James Thomson and Mallet.]

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