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Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

"English Prose A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice"

With change
of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can by
an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes,
and then the picture of the mind revives again; but we forget those that
we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place at a
time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we
paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other.
We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The
landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it,
and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We
pass on, and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from our
sight, also blots it from our memory like a dream. In travelling through
a wild barren country, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one.
It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see of
it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise the
country. "Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir Fopling Flutter, "all is a
desert.


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