Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/306

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HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ADDRESSES

their holidays, instead of going to places where they can be quiet, deliberately go to a place which they think will excite them. They want to see the biggest mountains they can, therefore they go to Switzerland; they want to see huge waterfalls, yet the beauty of a waterfall may be ruined by its size. I want you to lay these ideas aside and believe that every country and every district has its own beauty and its own charm, and that beauty and charm are not a matter of size, but that their discovery depends upon the power of perception which we bring to it.

Again, people often seem to think that things are valuable in proportion to their cost, and for that reason they take their holidays as far away from home as possible. I would like to plead with you to take your holidays as near home as possible. If in the ordinary course of your life you are not able to make a sufficient study of your surroundings, then give a week's holiday sometimes to trying to learn what your own surroundings can teach you. Believe me that it is possible to take a most delightful holiday at a very small cost by simply going out a short distance by train, making a circuit of some sixteen miles on your legs to another station, looking at all the things which you see on your way, and coming back contentedly to your supper in the evening. You will have had opportunity to appreciate the features of a district in your own neighbourhood and to gather the ideas which it suggested to you.

These ideas are not only concerned with the life of the people who dwell among them. Each country has its own æsthetic suggestiveness, its own æsthetic