Page:Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature.djvu/17

. Volcanic rocks often rise into isolated crags with verdant slopes below. Granite lifts itself into craggy moorlands, with cliffs and corries and long trails of naked scree.

For the purposes of the present Lecture, I will arrange the scenery of this country in three leading types:—

These types are often not separable from each other by any sharp lines of boundary. The lowlands, for example, include ranges of hills, and here and there gradually rise into uplands, which in turn occasionally mount into lofty, rugged ground that may well be called highland. Moreover, each type presents a number of local varieties, dependent on geological structure. Thus the English lowlands differ in many respects from the Scottish, and both from the Irish.

The arrangement now proposed, though not strictly scientific, is for the proposed discussion convenient. We shall find, I think, that each of the three main types has had a perceptible influence on our literature, and not only so, but that even the local variations of each type have left their impress on our literary history. To treat the subject as fully as it deserves to be treated would require a course of lectures. I can only attempt to illustrate it by selecting a few instances where the relation that I wish to establish seems to be most readily perceptible.