Question

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.

The underlying reasons for such differences are not hard to find. In a society in which people still starve to death, an orchard is not a beautiful thing in itself: its beauty lies in the fact that it produces apples and cider. A wide flat field is "finer” than rugged terrain for it can be tilled easily to produce wheat and so represents good white bread. A small thatched cottage, which a modern viewer might consider pretty, will be considered unattractive by an Elizabethan traveler, for cottagers are generally poor and able to offer little in the way of hospitality. Ranges of hills and mountains are obstacles to Elizabethan travelers and very far from picturesque features you go out of your way to see. Hills might feature in an Elizabethan writer’s description of a county because of their potential for sheep grazing, but on the whole he will be more concerned with listing all the houses of the gentry, their seats and parks.

Which detail gives implicit information about the modern view of the Elizabethan landscape?

In a society in which people still starve to death, an orchard is not a beautiful thing in itself: its beauty lies in the fact that it produces apples and cider.
A wide flat field is “finer” than rugged terrain for it can be tilled easily to produce wheat and so represents good white bread.
Ranges of hills and mountains are obstacles to Elizabethan travelers and very far from picturesque features you go out of your way to see.
Hills might feature in an Elizabethan writer’s description of a county because of their potential for sheep grazing, but on the whole he will be more concerned with listing all the houses of the gentry, their seats and parks.

Answer 1

"Ranges of hills and mountains are obstacles to Elizabethan travelers and very far from picturesque features you go out of your way to see."

This line implies the modern view (contrastingly) is that hills and mountains are picturesque and worth seeking out.