Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/305

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view. There are certainly places in England where, by crossing a valley, you can pass to absolutely different geological formations. You can have the opportunity of observing the great laws and the great forces which have made the surface of the globe. And as it is in this particular way, so it is in almost any other. Every part of England has its own natural suggestiveness, and we move almost imperceptibly from a place which suggests one set of ideas to a place which suggests another. If you will lend yourself to the suggestions of your own country, you will be driven to think in spite of yourself, and you must be a very indolent person indeed, if you do not receive a great many impressions when you take your summer holiday in a place which is at all interesting.

I have been speaking to you with a view to your holidays—speaking of the possible effect of different places upon the minds of those who have grown complicated through living in towns, and who are also perhaps complicated by being over-educated. That complication, it seems to me, sometimes leads people to apply the same tests to their holidays as they would to a commercial undertaking. Commercial operations we know are successful in proportion to their largeness; and commercial considerations teach us that everything has to be measured by its pecuniary value. I do not wish to criticise these two maxims from a commercial point of view, but they are exceedingly unintelligent in the intellectual sphere. I need not tell you that things are not important in proportion to their greatness. I speak of this because I so often find that people when they go away for