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First Impressions Of England

First Impressions Of England image
Parent Issue
Day
29
Month
April
Year
1887
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Hero ara sotne of my first impressions of England as seen from-the carriage and from the cars. Huw vcry English! I recall Birket Foster's "Pictures of Enghsh Landscape"- a beautiful, poetical serias ot views, but hardly more poetical than thereality. IIow thorouglily England in groomed! Our New England out-of-doors landscape often looks as if it had got out j of bed, and had not llnished its toilet. i Thaglowing creen of everything strikes ; me - green hedges in place of our railfences, always vigly, and our rude stone-walls, which are not wanting in a certain look of fitness approaching to comeliness, and are really picturesque when lichen-coated, but poor features of landscape as compared to these universal hedaes. I am disappointed in the tree3, so far; I have not seen one large tree as yet. Most of the trees are of very moderate dimensions, feathered all the way uptlieir longslendertrunks.with ftlop-sided niopofleaves at the top, like a wig which haft Slipped away. 1 trust that I am not finding everything couleur de rose; but I eertainly do lind the cheeks of cbildren and young persons of Buch brilliant rosy hue as 1 do not remember that I have ever seen before. I am almost ready to think this and that child'a face has been colored fiom a pink saneer. If the Bastón youths exposed for sale at Rome, in the day of Pope Gregory the üreat, had complexions like these children. no onder that the pontiil exclaimed, not Angli, but angeli! All this may sound a little extravagant, but I am giving my impressions without any intentional exajrgeration. How far these inipressions may be moditied by after experiences there will be time enough to find out and to teil. It isbetter to set them down at once just ns they are. A first impression is one never to be repeated; the second look will see much that was not noticed, but it will not reproduce the sharp lines of the first proof, which is alwaps interestina, no matter what the eye or the tnind fixes ujion. "I see men as treea walking." That first experiencecould not be mended. When Dickens landed in Boston he was struck with the briuhtnes8 of all the objecls he s.iw- buildings, signs, etc. Vhen I landed in Liverpool everything looked very ilark, very dingy, very massive in the streets I drove throuph. So in London, but in a week it all seemed natural enough. - O. W. Holmes, in Mnrch Atlantic.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat