The Englishman has little
precision; the Dutchman has too much. He bends everything to it. He has
at its dictates divided his whole country into parellelograms. Even the
rushes in his swamps are governed by the same law. The carelessness
of nature is offensive to him; he moulds and trains on every hand,
as one may see on the railway journey to The Hague. Trees he endures
only so long as they are obedient and equidistant: he likes them
in avenues or straight lines; if they grow otherwise they must be
pollarded. It is true that he has not touched the Bosch, at The Hague;
but since his hands perforce have been kept off its trees, he has run
scores of formal straight well-gravelled paths beneath their branches.
This passion for interference grew perhaps from exultation upon
successful dealings with the sea. A man who by his own efforts can
live in security below sea-level, and graze cattle luxuriantly where
sand and pebbles and salt once made a desert, has perhaps the right
to feel that everything in nature would be the better for a little
manipulation. Eyes accustomed to the careless profusion that one may
see even on a short railway journey in England are shocked to find
nature so tractable both in land and water.
The Dutchman's pruning, however, is not done solely for the
satisfaction of exerting control.
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