I am tired of the old images; of
the barren alternations between Italy and the Highlands. I had once dreamt
of going to the tropics myself; but my work lay elsewhere. Go for me, and
for the people. See if you cannot help to infuse some new blood into the
aged veins of English literature; see if you cannot, by observing man in
his mere simple and primeval state, bring home fresh conceptions of beauty,
fresh spiritual and physical laws of his existence, that you may realize
them here at home--(how, I see as yet but dimly; but He who teaches the
facts will surely teach their application)--in the cottages, in the
play-grounds, the reading-rooms, the churches of working men."
"But I know so little--I have seen so little!"
"That very fact, I flatter myself, gives you an especial vocation for my
scheme. Your ignorance of cultivated English scenery, and of Italian art,
will enable you to approach with a more reverend, simple, and unprejudiced
eye the primeval forms of beauty--God's work, not man's. Sin you will
see there, and anarchy, and tyranny, but I do not send you to look for
society, but for nature.
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