Read it through once

It is very difficult to realize this. The best way is to go to the National, or any other good picture-gallery, and look carefully at any landscapes painted before the year 1805. You will scarcely believe that the country as painted can be the land we know. Where is the "awful orderliness" of England? Where are the trim hedges? Where are the tidy roadsides and beautifully embanked rivers that we see to-day?