is, is known through Nature, if it
would not be more correct to say that God and Nature are identical. This
Nature often means the world as not modified by human action, and
therefore sharing the divine workmanship unspoilt by man's interference.
Thus in the common phrase, the 'love of Nature' is generally taken to
mean the love of natural scenery, of sea and sky and mountains, which
are not altered or alterable by any human art. Yet it is said the want
of any such love describes one of the most obvious deficiencies in
Pope's poetry, of which Wordsworth so often complained. His famous
preface asserts the complete absence of any imagery from Nature in the
writings of the time. It was, however, at the period of which I am
speaking that a change was taking place which was worth considering.

One cause is obvious. The Wit utters the voice of the town. He agreed
with the gentleman who preferred the smell of a flambeau in St. James
Street to any abundance of violet and sweetbriar. But, as communications
improved between town and country, the separation between the taste of
classes became less marked. The great nobleman had always been in part
an exalted squire, and had a taste for field-sports as well as for the
opera. Bolingbroke and Walpole are both instances in point. Sir Roger de
Coverley came up to town more frequently than his ancestors, but the
_Spectator_ recorded his visits as those of a simple rustic. After the
peace, the country gentleman begins regularly to visit the Continent.
The 'grand tour' mostly common in the preceding century becomes a normal
fact of the education of the upper classes. The foundation of the
Dilettante Club in 1734 marks the change. The qualifications, says
Horace Walpole, were drunkenness and a visit to Italy. The founders of
it seem to have been jovial young men who had met each other abroad,
where, with obsequious tutors and out of sight of domestic authority,
they often learned some very queer lessons. But many of them learned
more, and by degrees the Dilettante Club took not only to encouraging
the opera in England, but to making really valuable archaeological
researches in Greece and elsewhere. The intelligent youth had great
opportunities of mixing in the best foreign society, and began to bring
home the pictures which adorn so many English country houses; to talk
about the 'correggiosity of Correggio'; and in due time to patronise
Reynolds and Gainsborough. The traveller began to take