TOLERANCE FOR CHEAP TRIPPERS.
THERE are few people more universally attacked than ordinary trippers and excursionists. They are con- sidered fair game for everybody. Their dress and appearance,
their manners, their noisy, unrefined talk and laughter, which come to jar on us in the grandest scenes which Nature offers us, and which, from theirlausterej magnificence, seem best suited to silence and solitude, have been too often described to need enlarging upon here. A word is sufficient to remind us of them, and to recall the feeling we have sometimes had of shame for poor humanity, which,:while it has been called the crown of Nature, should thus show itself the one blot upon Nature, the only vulgar and jarring element. In moments of aggravation from their presence, we are tempted to ask : Is it worth while for such people to come to these places at all ? Would it not be far better if they could be restricted to some cheap and showy place of amusement, the pleasures of which culminate in the tea-gardens or refresh- ment-room? Is it fair that they should be allowed to spoil scenes of beauty for us, which they seem unable to appreciate themselves ? If the answer to these questions be a hasty one, it will probably be in accordance with our own wishes. Perhaps if we consider the matter a little more deeply and carefully, reflecting on some of the conditions under which the spell of beauty works, we may give a different answer.
The first requisite is, that there should be some faculty of response within, to the appeal made by beauty without. That such a faculty is in some degree universal, is, we think, proved by the common witness of mankind, beginning with the savage at the bottom of the scale. In the case of the people of whom we are now thinking, even the tawdry adornments, the crude and gaudy colours of their dresses, that jar on our taste, are really an endeavour to satisfy:the appetite for beauty which, we believe, exists in all, and which is witnessed in a hundred other would-be adornments of life, which we should find did we visit the homes of these excursionists. Of course, the distance between the meretricious beauty which would there greet our eyes and the:beauty of natural scenery, is immense; but, at any rate, it indicates the existence of the faculty. How this is to be:developed and educated, it will be for us to consider.
The first stage in this training is, we think, that the tripper should know as a fact that these places are considered beautiful, whether he is able to receive pleasure from them or not. However unimportant this may seem at first sight, we shall see that it is a point worth considering, when we remember that it is not very long ago that even highly educated people were ignorant that beauty existed at all in some of the aspects of Nature which we now regard as grand and sublime. How little was Nature unadorned admired in the last century ! A trim garden, symmetrically arranged pleasure-grounds, graceful fountains, well-regulated streams flowing between neatly-ordered banks, were appreciated; but mountains and moors, rocks, cliffs and chasms, were, in the eyes of our ancestors, only "with gloomy horrors overspread."
The highly educated, large-minded Dr. Johnson was far more repelled and depressed by the mountain sceneryof Scotland and its Western Islands than attracted by its beauty and grandeur. He speaks with anything but appreciation of the rocks" tower- ing in horrid nakedness." The moors clad in the heath, that is so pleasant to our eyes, are to him covered with "the gloom of desolation," "quickened only with one sullen power of useless vegetation." He regards it as a tenable position that journeys, such as those that he has undertaken, "neither im- pregnate the imagination, nor enlarge the understanding." He defends them, not on the ground of the beauty that they have to offer, but only as "a means of acquiring knowledge and gaining more principles of reasoning and a wider basis of analogy." The islets of Loch Lomond, on which "the arts of embellishment" might have been employed, "disgust the gazer at his approach, when he finds, instead of soft lawns and
shady thickets, nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness." Such scenes could only allure "the mere lover of naked nature." If it be objected that the prosaic side was stronger in Johnson than the poetic, though he was a writer of verse and of romance, we have a witness in an earlier age, in a pro- fessed poet, Herrick. A residence in one of the most lovely counties of England apparently gave him so little pleasure from the surrounding beauty, that his eloquence is expended in abuse in song, "Of this dull Devonshire."
It would be easy to enumerate other witnesses who bear a smilar testimony; and it was not till a generation after Johnson that the world gradually awoke to beauties before unknown to them. As is generally the way when new ideas find an entry into the world, the revelation was made to one or two gifted men, who, after delivering their message to man- kind through a period of neglect or of contempt, at last obtained a hearing. Of these apostles of Nature, it is scarcely necessary to say that Wordsworth was the most prominent. The taste for fine scenery once awakened, was gradually developed, until at last in our own day, admiration of all the beauties of Nature has become the fashion. If people do not feel it, at least they profess it. Here and there you may find some exceptional individual, even amongst the highly-educated, who will tell you that what others call these beauties make no appeal to him ; but such cases are so rare and exceptional that they need not be considered here. Love of Nature is in the air, and we all breathe it. Here, then, we would build our first hope for the despised tripper. He is in a better position than our ancestors, for he was born in an appreciative age, and knows that the places to which his brake or char-a-banc bear him and his companions, are considered beautiful. Having reached this first stage, would it be any good to ask him to take the further one of a study of Wordsworth and the other writers who have done so much for us? Not in the least, at present. His mind in these respects is in so immature a state, that he must be taught as children are taught, by pictures and object. lessons. Nature's great picture-book must be opened before him and as many of her pictures as possible put before his eyes. We believe that will be the best means of his educa- tion, because it is the simplest, and because we hold that beauty is itself educative. Its spell is a powerful one, and you must give it a chance of working. If he were to be de- barred (which happily he cannot be) from these scenes of beauty till he had become refined and cultivated enough to enjoy them, you would take from him one of his best chances of becoming so. He cannot be the loser ; there is good ground for hoping that he may be the gainer by them. Even amongst the noisiest, most empty-headed and vulgar pleasure-party- if it be permissible to apply the word " vulgar " to any human being—there may be one or two who perceive some- thing of the beauty, and are unconsciously influenced by it. They may remember afterwards, when they return to the shows and competitions of their work-a-day life, that the world is a fuller and a grander place than they had imagined.
But, it may be asked, is it not true that Nature only affects us in silence and solitude ? Amongst the really poor, in the quiet and retirement of the country, we are often well pleased to find a real appreciation of natural beauty ; but how can we expect it here ? Even in a large party of cultivated people, the presence of numbers acts as a check on our powers of appreciation. Is it possible for Nature to make her quiet voice heard amongst this noisy crew ? It is quite true, and cannot be denied, that the mutual influence of these trippers does increase the difficulty and retard the working of the spell. But though it may retard, we cannot believe that it will stop it altogether; and the much-abused excnrsionist has a right to opportunities for its action. In all probability that influence will be slow ; but once set it in motion, and it will work. In a different field of beauty, and amongst a lower and more ignorant class, a similar experiment is being tried, in picture-galleries in the East-end of London. Crowds of poor people have attended them ; and it is satisfactory to find that some of the most poetical and imaginative of the pictures are among those which were most admired. This is a clear encouragement. The help which the spectators have received from gentlemen and ladies, who have been in attendance to point out beauties which might otherwise have been overlooked, is one which we wish the trippers could share. We have now reached the point when we may give an answer to the questions with which we started. For the reasons given, we reply,—Yes ; it is worth while that these noisy tourists should be admitted to such beautiful places, even though they spoil to us for a time scenes of loveliness which they seem little able to appreciate. If, in our readiness to make this sacrifice for the good of our fellows, we thereby enlarge our human sympathies, perhaps our gain will be as great in the end as if we had been left to the uninterrupted enjoyment of the most exalted emotions.
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