t have
had ample opportunity to behold the glories which Nature sometimes
spreads before us in our Northern clime, and lavishes more constantly
on less favoured regions. But the loveliness of blue skies and serene
air, the glitter of distant snows, the soft radiance of the summer
moon, and the golden architrave of the sunset he had no eyes to see.

Such indifference to the beauties of Nature admits, however, of some
explanation. With a scantier population than that which now covers the
earth, there was less agriculture and more of waste and unkempt
places not yet reduced to the service of mankind. Solitudes were
vaster and more complete. In a country so well cared for as England is
to-day, it is difficult to imagine how unpleasing can be the aspect of
land over which Nature still has the upper hand, how desolate and
dreadful the great mountain areas which men now have to seek at the
ends of the earth, where the smoke rises not and even the lone
goatherd has not penetrated. To-day our difficulty is to escape from
the thronging pressure of millions: we rarely experience what in the
sixteenth century must often have been felt--the shrinking to leave,
the joy of returning to, the kindly race of men. Ascham in the
_Toxophilus_ (1545), when discussing the relaxations open to the
scholar who has been 'sore at his book', urges that 'walking alone
into the field hath no token of courage in it'. But though this may
have been true by that time in the immediate neighbourhood of English
towns, it was not yet true abroad; for Thomas Starkey in his
_Dialogue_ (1538), almost as valuable a source as the _Utopia_,
praises foreign cities with their resident nobles by comparison with
English, which are neglected and dirty 'because gentlemen fly into the
country to live, and let cities, castles and towns fall into ruin and
decay'.

It is tantalizing, too, considering how abundant are Erasmus' literary
remains, that we get so little description of places from him. He
travelled far and wide, in the Low Countries, up and down the Rhine,
through France, southwards to Rome and Naples. He was a year in
Venice, three years at Cambridge, eight years at Basle, six at
Freiburg. What precious information he might have given us about these
places, which then as now were full of interesting buildings and
treasures of art! what a mine of antiquarian detail, if he had
expatiated occasionally! But a meagre description of Constance, a word
or two about B