Miseducation of Catherine Morland (3)

I want to stick with that sentence:

They [the Tilney's] were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste.

That last phrase, "with all the eagerness of real taste" is intriguing. That wording suggests irony. Austen does not say, "with real taste"; what she says suggests that they are doing something that resembles real taste but is not.

One interesting, and simple example of picturesque principles is that the best view is up the hill. You can prove this for yourself by taking a picture up a hill and then from the top. No matter how wonderful the view from the top of the hill, the view up usually makes a better picture. And so Catherine's education requires her to learn this. Here she is before Henry's lectrure on the picturesque:

She knew nothing of drawing -- nothing of taste: and she listened to them with an attention which brought her little profit, for they talked in phrases which conveyed scarcely any idea to her. The little which she could understand, however, appeared to contradict the very few notions she had entertained on the matter before. It seemed as if a good view were no longer to be taken from the top of an high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day.

And here she is afterward:

Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.

This entire section of the walk is recounted by the narrator so we can be clear that it is Jane Austen who is being arch here and not Henry Tilney.