In general we may say that novels had little to do with Nature, and romances much. This may account for the lack of reality in the descriptions. There is nothing in any work of fiction at all correspondent to the temperate, truthful, clear-cut work of Cowper and Burns. There is practically nothing of the bald realism of John Scott, whose poetry was written rather in the scientific temper with which most travels were undertaken. Nor, on the other hand, is there anything of the visionary, mystical power of Blake. The best use of Nature in fiction is more akin to the emotionalism of Beattie. Except for Mrs. Radcliffe, and she came late in the century, fiction contributed less to bring about the new attitude toward Nature than did any other form of art expression. CHAPTER IV TRAVELS It is impossible to do more here than merely to sketch the possibilities in a “History of the Tour and the Guide Book,” because the mass of material to be gone over is so great. Pinkerton’s “Catalogue of Voyages and Travels,” published in 1814, gives over 4,500 books. It is so elaborately tabulated that it is not easy to use, but it is possible to cull from its voluminous pages a fairly compendious list of such travels as were published in England in the eighteenth century. In this list there are about 360 books. Of these 360 books all but 84 are travels outside of Great Britain and Ireland. Their distribution through the century indicates a steady growth of interest in foreign lands, for nearly half of the English accounts of travels in other countries belong in the last quarter of the century. But these foreign tours, however interesting in themselves, are outside the present field of inquiry. They were undertaken usually with some definite purpose. Antiquities, curiosities, minerals; laws, manners, customs; utilitarian possibilities--these were the leading subjects of inquiry. In the titles such phrases as, “relating chiefly to the history, antiquities, and geography;” “remarks on Characters and Manners;” “chiefly relative to the knowledge of mankind, industry, literature, and natural history;” “with an account of the most memorable sieges;” “containing a great variety of geographical, topographical and political observations;” “containing specially a description of fortified towns;” “containing a Picture of the Country, the Manners, and the Actual Government,” are of constant recurrence and serve to mark out the general scope of these works. There are, to be sure, in these books, many scattered descriptions of the natural scenes visited. This is especially true of the “Travels” in the last quarter of the century. But to study these descriptions, even superficially, would be too wide a work for the present limits. Furthermore, the accounts of the tours made in the United Kingdom will doubtless reveal the characteristics of the observations made in foreign lands.