Refinement is
not negative, because it must be compassed by many negations. It is a
thing of price as well as of value; it demands immolations, it exacts
experience. No slight or easy charge, then, is committed to such of us
as, having apprehension of these things, fulfil the office of exclusion.
Never before was a time when derogation was always so near, a daily
danger, or when the reward of resisting it was so great. The simplicity
of literature, more sensitive, more threatened, and more important than
other simplicities, needs a guard of honour, who shall never relax the
good will nor lose the good heart of their intolerance.
THE LESSON OF LANDSCAPE
The landscape, like our literature, is apt to grow and to get itself
formed under too luxurious ideals. This is the evil work of that
_little more_ which makes its insensible but persistent additions to
styles, to the arts, to the ornaments of life--to nature, when unluckily
man becomes too explicitly conscious of her beauty, and too deliberate in
his arrangement of it. The landscape has need of moderation, of that
fast-disappearing grace of unconsciousness, and, in short, of a return
towards the ascetic temper. The English way of landowning, above all,
has made for luxury.
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