Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/21

 such scenery cannot, in their finer relations to the human mind, be comprehended, or even very imperfectly conceived, without processes of culture or opportunities of observation in some degree habitual;'—he suggests that the dwellers in towns should be prepared, by more frequent intercourse with Nature in her gentle moods of field and wood, to appreciate her more majestic aspects. Finally he ridicules the folly of destroying the charm of the district, on the pretence of bringing people under its influence.

Such, in the main, is the scope of the first letter. In the second the argument is enforced by other considerations. Thus he deprecates the proposal to send people from the humbler ranks of society in large droves to the Lakes, on the ground, not only of their inability to gain any material benefit from the romantic scenery, but also of the want of respect for their independence shewn by such a proceeding. He puts in a plea on behalf of the resident gentry who, having settled in the locality for the sake of retirement, might be driven away by the proposed change; and observes, with much truth, that the poor would suffer by exchanging their old neighbours of the richer sort,—whose constant kindliness and care he eulogizes,— for 'strangers not linked to the neighbourhood, but flitting to and fro between their fancy villas and the homes where their wealth was accumulated and accumulating by trade and manufactures,'