Explore "The Views of England" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
England is a country with edges and with a core. It is a country very / small for the number of people who live in it, and very appreciable to / the eye for the traveller who travels on foot or in a boat from place / to place. Considering the part it has in the making of the world, it / might justly be compared to a jewel which is very small and very / valuable and can almost be held in the hand. The physical appreciation / of England is to be reached by an appreciation of landscape.
It so happens that England is traversed by remarkable and sudden / ranges; hills with a sharp escarpment overlooking great undulating / plains. This is not true of any other one country of Europe, but it is / true of England, and a man who professes to consider, to understand, to / criticize, to defend, and to love this country, must know the Pennines, / the Cotswolds, the North and the South Downs, the Chilterns, the / Mendips, and the Malverns; he must know Delamere Forest, and he must / know the Hill of Beeston, from which all Cheshire may be perceived. If / he knows these heights and has long considered the prospects which they / afford, he can claim to have seen the face of England.