red painters are the only ones who introduce
mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in a
formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. So Shakspere never
speaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but only of lowland
flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams. And if we talk to the
mountaineer, he will usually characterize his own country to us as a
"pays affreux," or in some equivalent, perhaps even more violent,
German term: but the lowland peasant does not think his country
frightful; he either will have no ideas beyond it, or about it; or
will think it a very perfect country, and be apt to regard any
deviation from its general principle of flatness with extreme
disfavour; as the Lincolnshire farmer in _Alton Locke_: "I'll shaw 'ee
some'at like a field o' beans, I wool--none o' this here darned ups
and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all
so vlat as a barn's vloor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country
to live in!"[97]

I do not say whether this be altogether right (though certainly not
wholly wrong), but it seems to me that there must be in the simple
freshness and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale upright trees,
and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for the satisfaction of the
human mind in general; and I so far agree with Homer, that, if I had
to educate an artist to the full perception of the meaning of the word
"gracefulness" in landscape, I should send him neither to Italy nor to
Greece, but simply to those poplar groves between Arras and Amiens.

But to return more definitely to our Homeric landscape. When it is
perfect, we have, as in the above instances, the foliage and meadows
together; when imperfect, it is always either the foliage or the
meadow; pre-eminently the meadow, or arable field. Thus, meadows of
asphodel are prepared for the happier dead; and even Orion, a hunter
among the mountains in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of beasts in
these asphodel meadows after death.[98] So the sirens sing in a
meadow; [99] and throughout the _Odyssey_ there is a general tendency
to the depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only fit
for goats, and has "no meadows";[100] for which reason Telemachus
refuses Atrides's present of horses, congratulating the Spartan king
at the same time on ruling over a plain which has "plenty of lotus in
it, and rushes," with corn and barley. Note this constant dwelling on
the marsh pla