And then, the scenery? It is not of our country at all. It is of many lands, but, above all, it is vividly Italian. There is no more minute and subtly-felt description of the scenery of a piece of village country between the mountains and the sea, with all its life, than in the poem called _The Englishman in Italy_. The very title is an outline of Browning's position in this matter. We find this English poet in France, in Syria, in Greece, in Spain, but not in England. We find Rome, Florence, Venice, Mantua, Verona, and forgotten towns among the Apennines painted with happy love in verse, but not an English town nor an English village. The flowers, the hills, the ways of the streams, the talk of the woods, the doings of the sea and the clouds in tempest and in peace, the aspects of the sky at noon, at sunrise and sunset, are all foreign, not English. The one little poem which is of English landscape is written by him in Italy (in a momentary weariness with his daily adoration), and under a green impulse. Delightful as it is, he would not have remained faithful to it for a day. Every one knows it, but that we may realise how quick he was to remember and to touch a corner of early Spring in England, on a soft and windy day--for all the blossoms are scattered--I quote it here. It is well to read his sole contribution (except in _Pauline_ and a few scattered illustrations) to the scenery of his own country: Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay, when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower; --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! So it runs; but it is only a momentary memory; and he knew, when he had done it, and to his great comfort, that he was far away from England. But when Tennyson writes of Italy--as, for instance, in _Mariana in the South_--how apart he is! How great is his joy when he gets back to England!