On the Approach to Western England

 HOW difficult it is to say what one really feels about the landscapes and the countrysides and the subtle souls of Europe! I think that all men who are of European blood feel those countrysides and the soul of them very strongly; but I think that they feel as I feel now, as I write, a difficulty of expression. There is something in it like the difficulty of approaching a personality. One may admire, or reverence¹, or even love, but the personality is different from one’s own; it has a chastity of its own that must be respected, it has its boundaries and its honour, and one always fears that one will transgress² such boundaries if one so much as speaks of the new thing one has come upon and desired to describe.

With distant travel it is not so. One comes far over seas to a quite strange land and one treats it brutally³. One’s appreciation⁴ is a sort of conquest; and you will note that those who speak of the Colonies, or of America, or of Africa, or of Asia speak of them with a hard intolerance as of something quite alien, or with a conventional set of phrases, as of something not worth the real expression of emotion. Now it is not so with our ancient provinces of Europe.

[168]A man coming out of the Cis-Alpine Gaul into old Italy across the Apennines feels something; indeed he feels it! What it is he feels very few men have written down; none has said it fully⁵. You get out of one thing into something other when you climb up out of the Valley of the Parma and cross the High Apennines and look southward into the happy Garfagnana, and hear the noise of the little Serchio beginning in its meads. In the same way no one has described (to my knowledge at least) that shock of desolation and yet of mystery which comes upon a man when he crosses the River Couesnon and passes from Normandy into Brittany. Normandy is rich, Brittany is poor. Normandy loves ritual, Brittany religion. Normandy can make things, Brittany prayers. Normandy lives by Brittany in the matter of the soul, Brittany not by Normandy in the matter of the body. What Norman ever gave a Breton anything? You cross that river and everything changes. The men and women have dreamier eyes, the little children play more wonderfully, everybody is poor.

Or, again, the passage from the hard industry of the Lancashire Plain suddenly on to the moors⁶, where the farming men and women are so quiet and silent and self-respectful and seem so careful rather to preserve what they own than to add to it. Or, again, the startling passage over Carter Fell from the Englishmen of Rede-Dale to the Scotchmen of Jedburgh; or the sharp passage from the violent,[169] active, sceptical, cruel, courageous⁷, well-fed, ironical⁸ Burgundians into the gentle Germans of the Vosges: here is a boundary which is not marked in any political way, and yet how marked it is!

Now in England we have many such approaches and surprises. I will not speak of that good change which comes upon a man as he travels south from Victoria Station and hears, almost at the same time that he first smells earth, the South Country tongue; nor will I speak of that other change which perhaps some of my readers know very well, the change from the active and grasping Cockney into the quiet tenacity⁹ of East Anglia. It is not my province—but if I am not wrong one strikes it within half an hour in the fast expresses—these people push with quants, they sail in wherries, they inhabit flat tidal banks, they are at peace. Nor will I here speak of the Marches and how, between a village and a village, one changes from the common English parish with the Squire’s house and the church and the cottages and all, into the hard slate¹⁰ roofs and the inner flame of Wales. Rather I would speak of something the boundary of which has never yet been laid down, but which people call (I think) “The West Country.”

One never knows, when one is tackling a thing like this, where one should first begin to tackle it, or by what end one should take it. Every man[170] according to his own study, every man according to his own bent¹¹ or accident of experience, takes it by his own handle, and the one man speaks of the language, the other of the hills, another of the architecture, another of the names. For my part I would desire to speak of all.

When one gets over a certain boundary one is in a peculiar¹² district of this world, a special countryside of Europe, a happy land with a conviction and a tradition of its own which may not have a name, but which is in general the West Country, and which by its hills and by its men and women convinces any true traveller at once of its personality. More than one man after a dreary¹³ wandering southwards through the Midlands has walked by night up one of its fresh streets to an inn and cried: “What! Have I come upon Paradise?” And this feeling comes also when one has climbed up the Cotswold through the little places of stone and suddenly sees the valley floor of the Severn so full of orchards¹⁴, or has come over the flat deserts of the Upper Thames and had revealed to him the Golden Valley; or, after plodding¹⁵ through Wiltshire, has smelt¹⁶ an air which told him that not far off were the heavy tides of that haunted sea which runs between the Welsh hills and the peninsula of Cornwall and Devon. Men are lost in these seas and are saved in them perpetually as by miracles: I can appeal, in this print, to how many? They have been saved by the miracle of that water. Here Arthur was[171] cast up by the waves: on to that flat salt, in its calm, full of mists, looked out those who gave us our legend of his Court.

The boundary into this particular land is not only fetched by men on foot; in no matter what kind of travel one pursues, one recognises that boundary in a flash as one traverses it. It is not only the orchards, nor the abrupt¹⁷ and pointed¹⁸ hills, nor those domestic towns, happy with memories, nor those clear waters, nor those meadows, bounded by careful walls of stone, but something much more which tells one that one has got into the enchanted¹⁹ land. That spirit in it which made the stuff of our early history, which gave us the landing of Joseph of Arimathea and the glorious bush of Glastonbury and the cycle of the Round Table and those good verses with regard to passion unrestrained:

... well you wot that of such life

There comes but sore battaille and strife²⁰

And blood of men and hard Travail²¹....

And the prophecies of Merlin, and the story of Tristan and Iseult and all the vision of immortality²² and of resurrection inhabits it still.

I never can believe (I speak for myself alone) that man can be dissociated from his earth any more than I can believe that the soul can be dissociated from the body. When men say to me that there is no soul, they can go on saying. But when men say that the soul can neglect the body then there is[172] matter for argument; and when the argument is finished one finds it is not so. Now thus it is with the earth that breeds us and into which if we are content to die at home (and since we must die somewhere, better die there) we should at last return. The landscapes of Europe make European men, and it is not for nothing that the climate and the shapes of the hills and the nature of the building stuff change just where man changes.

There is enchantment²³ upon every high place of England, but the enchantment of the Devonshire Moors and of the Tors to the North and upwards²⁴ from them is different from the enchantment of the Downs. There is a great delight in the proper fireplaces of the English people, but who, thoroughly²⁵ alive, could mistake a fireplace in the West Riding for a fireplace on the Western Rother or either of these for a fireplace a little before Sherborne in the tumbles and the hollows where Dorset and Somerset meet? There is a richness of the speech and a contentment of the tongue which any man from the new countries might think common to all English agricultural men: yet there was a man from Sussex who, hearing the Sussex tongue in the Choughs at Yeovil, felt himself indeed come home. Our provinces differ very much.

I have sometimes wondered whether in the process of time these little intimate differences of ours will survive. I wish they would! I wish they would, by the Lord! The Greeks were a little people, yet[173] their provinces have survived, and the contempt that Aspasia felt for the Peloponnesus is (or should be) yet recorded. The hill tribes behind the Ph?nician coast were a little people, but the fame of their religion, of their civil wars, has survived that of the merchants of Tyre. Rome, Veii, and the others were little places like Arundel and Pulborough, quite close together; but they were talked of, and men know much of them to-day.

I could wish the differences of this island were so known and that people coming from a long way off would be humble²⁶ and learn those differences. Surely a nation grows great in this way, by many provinces reacting one upon the other, recognised by the general will, sometimes in conflict with it. At any rate the West Country is a province of Europe; no one can get into it without touching²⁷ his youth again and putting his fingers to earth, and getting sustenance²⁸ from it, as a man does when he turns at the turning point of a race and touches earth with his fingers and is strong again to spring forward.

1 reverence   

n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统，但不被传统所束缚。

2 transgress   

vt.违反，逾越

参考例句：

• Your words must't transgress the local laws .你的言辞不能违反当地法律。
• No one is permitted to have privileges to transgress the law. 不允许任何人有超越法律的特权。

3 brutally   

adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地

参考例句：

• The uprising was brutally put down.起义被残酷地镇压下去了。
• A pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed.一场争取民主的起义被残酷镇压了。

4 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。

5 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

6 moors   

v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• the North York moors 北约克郡的漠泽
• They're shooting grouse up on the moors. 他们在荒野射猎松鸡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 courageous   

adj.勇敢的，有胆量的

参考例句：

• We all honour courageous people.我们都尊重勇敢的人。
• He was roused to action by courageous words.豪言壮语促使他奋起行动。

8 ironical   

adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironical end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• From his general demeanour I didn't get the impression that he was being ironical.从他整体的行为来看，我不觉得他是在讲反话。

9 tenacity   

n.坚韧

参考例句：

• Tenacity is the bridge to success.坚韧是通向成功的桥。
• The athletes displayed great tenacity throughout the contest.运动员在比赛中表现出坚韧的斗志。

10 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？

11 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

12 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

13 dreary   

adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的

参考例句：

• They live such dreary lives.他们的生活如此乏味。
• She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事。

14 orchards   

（通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They turned the hills into orchards and plains into granaries. 他们把山坡变成了果园，把平地变成了粮仓。
• Some of the new planted apple orchards have also begun to bear. 有些新开的苹果园也开始结苹果了。

15 plodding   

a.proceeding in a slow or dull way

参考例句：

• They're still plodding along with their investigation. 他们仍然在不厌其烦地进行调查。
• He is plodding on with negotiations. 他正缓慢艰难地进行着谈判。

16 smelt   

v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼

参考例句：

• Tin is a comparatively easy metal to smelt.锡是比较容易熔化的金属。
• Darby was looking for a way to improve iron when he hit upon the idea of smelting it with coke instead of charcoal.达比一直在寻找改善铁质的方法，他猛然想到可以不用木炭熔炼，而改用焦炭。

17 abrupt   

adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的

参考例句：

• The river takes an abrupt bend to the west.这河突然向西转弯。
• His abrupt reply hurt our feelings.他粗鲁的回答伤了我们的感情。

18 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

19 enchanted   

adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• She was enchanted by the flowers you sent her. 她非常喜欢你送给她的花。
• He was enchanted by the idea. 他为这个主意而欣喜若狂。

20 strife   

n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争

参考例句：

• We do not intend to be drawn into the internal strife.我们不想卷入内乱之中。
• Money is a major cause of strife in many marriages.金钱是造成很多婚姻不和的一个主要原因。

21 travail   

n.阵痛；努力

参考例句：

• Mothers know the travail of giving birth to a child.母亲们了解分娩时的痛苦。
• He gained the medal through his painful travail.他通过艰辛的努力获得了奖牌。

22 immortality   

n.不死，不朽

参考例句：

• belief in the immortality of the soul 灵魂不灭的信念
• It was like having immortality while you were still alive. 仿佛是当你仍然活着的时候就得到了永生。

23 enchantment   

n.迷惑，妖术，魅力

参考例句：

• The beauty of the scene filled us with enchantment.风景的秀丽令我们陶醉。
• The countryside lay as under some dread enchantment.乡村好像躺在某种可怖的魔法之下。

24 upwards   

adv.向上，在更高处...以上

参考例句：

• The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
• The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。

25 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

26 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。

27 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

28 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。