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For thousands of years, the mountains, lakes and forests of Britain have been just geography.
几千年来，英国的山川林木不过是地理名词。
But in the late 1700s, they became something much more -- the face of our nation. Our countryside became our country.
但在十八世纪末被赋予了新的涵义，成为国家的象征。英国的乡村成了国家的缩影。
When homesick travellers thought fondly of Britain, they thought of their landscape. Most of us still do.
当思乡的旅者深切回忆祖国，乡愁中便满载英国的自然景色。大部分人至今如是。
And it was, for the first time, a landscape of all the British nations -- the wild places of Wales and Scotland, as well as the peaks of Northern England, rediscovered, relished, mapped.
这缩影中首次囊括了英国的全部领土，威尔士和苏格兰的荒野，还有英格兰北部的群峰，都被重新发现与定义，并绘入地图。
For centuries, going to the country had meant, for the gentry, a stroll through a manicured estate, an Arcadia as drowsy with sunshine as an Italian afternoon.
几世纪来，到乡间对于绅士们来讲，就是漫步于他们修建齐整的庄园，在他们的世外桃源享受慵懒阳光，恰如午后的意大利。
But in the second half of the 18th century, there was a sudden change in the weather.
但在十八世纪下半叶，世风大变。
The more adventurous Britons had had enough of make-believe sunshine and shepherds. They wanted the real thing; they wanted it rough.
那些更爱冒险的英国人受够了庄园里假惺惺的阳光和牧场。他们想要亲身体验大自然，渴望亲历艰险。
And they were prepared to go to places where no one in their right mind a generation before would have dreamt of setting foot.
而他们作好准备将要涉足的土地，是上代人做梦也不敢想的。
But those who clambered up the crags weren't just out for thrills.
但那些攀岩峭壁的人可不仅仅是图刺激。
In the wild places, they thought, might have survived the kind of Britons who'd stayed miraculously untouched by the evils of town life, its corrupt politics and diseased bodies.
他们认为在荒野之中，或许还存留着些许英国人奇迹般地躲过了都市魔爪以及腐化政治和病态社会的影响。
If we could somehow learn from their childlike innocence, we could become like them and recapture what it meant to be free, to be a natural-born Briton.
如果我们能学习这些人孩童般的纯真，或许就能变得像他们一样重拾自由平等的意义，做回自然纯朴的英国人。
Nature, in the last decades of the 18th century, came to mean something far more important than gardening or hiking.
"自然"一词在十八世纪最后的几十年中不仅是指园艺或徒步旅行，而变得别有深意。
A love of nature became code for a crusade, a revolution even.
对自然的崇尚暗示着对改革，甚至革命的期许。
And this time, the crusaders weren't going to be in chain mail.
这次革命的领军者并非身着锁子甲的士兵们。
They would be poets, painters, hack journalists, men and women who sensed a great change coming and were rushing to embrace it. What they saw coming was dark and dirty weather.
而是诗人、画家和雇佣文人，那些嗅到改革气息并张开怀抱迎接时代改变的人们。他们嗅到的是一场狂风暴雨。
Britain was about to be hit by an immense political cyclone -- a revolution in France, just over the Channel.
一股强大的政治飓风正在逼近英国--大革命席卷的法国就在英吉利海峡那头。
The boldest of the poets and pamphleteers longed for the storm to strike here, too.
那些诗人和檄文作者中的胆大之人渴望这场风暴也能席卷英国。
More anxious souls were afraid that where there was lightning there would also be fire and destruction.
而那些焦虑的人们又在担心闪电照亮之处难免要伴随着烈火与毁灭。
In the end, Britain would weather the storm. But as the Duke of Wellington once famously put it, it was "The nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life."
英国最终还是卷入这场风暴。正如威灵顿公爵那句名言所说，这是"你一生所见最势均力敌的较量"。
Just how near-run? Wait and see.
但实力究竟有多接近？我们等着瞧。
