THE LOVE OF NATURE.* ONE of the most conspicuous features of English literature, is that intense love of the sublime and beautiful in nature, which pervades with a living spirit the works of our poets; gives so peculiar a charm to the writings of our naturalists; possesses great prominence in our travellers; is mingled with the fervent breathings of our religious treatises; and even finds its way into the volumes of our philosophy. If we look into the literature of the continental nations, we find it existing there, more or less, but in a lower tone than our own; if we look back into the ancients, we find it there too, but still fainter, more confined in its scope, and scattered, as it were, into distant and isolated spots. I think nothing can be more striking than the truth of this; and it is a curious matter of observation, that there should be this distinction, and of inquiry whence it has arisen. The love of the beauty and sublimity of nature is an inherent principle in the human soul; but, like all other of our finer qualities, it is later in its developement than the common ones, and requires, not repression, but fostering and cultivation. It is like the love of the fine arts it slumbers in the bosom that passes through life in its native rudeness. It lies in the unploughed ground of the human mind, a seed buried below the influence that alone can call it into activity. ledge, and have their intellectual power reached, and their affections kindled, by the blessedness of refined Christian culture, then it grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength. It daily enlarges its grasp, and its appetite; it expands perpetually the circle of its horizon. The love of the fine arts is but a modification of this great passion. Their objects are the same,-the sublime and the beautiful; and the same purity and elevation of taste accompany them both. This is the original and legitimate passion. In our love of the fine arts, our attention is occupied with human imitations of what is beautiful in nature. In this we fix our admiration at once on the magnificent works of the great Artist of the universe. We might, therefore, reasonably expect to find in the literature of the ancients, what is actually the case, a less refined, less expanded, less penetrating and absorbing existence of this affection. Every where the love of nature must exist. In all ages and all countries, so is the outward universe framed to influence the inward, that men must be impressed by the grandeur of creation, and attracted by its beauty, so far as the human is advanced beyond the limits of mere animal existence. But in the ancient world education was never popular; it extended only to a few; and of these few a majority were occupied in the pursuits of art, or the speculations of philosophy; and poetry, and especially the poetry of nature, had scanty followers. The great poets of all ages, even of those but semi-civilized, must necessarily have minds so sensitive to the influence of all kinds of beauty, that they could not help being alive to that of nature; and this was the case with the great poets of Greece. We put out of the present question the dramatic and lyrical ones; for to From Howitt's "Rural Life of England." "Yes, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea; Like the man's thoughts, dark in the infant brain; Like aught that is, which wraps what is to be;" there it lies, deep in the soil of common events and cares, and untouched by the divine atmosphere of knowledge, which a more easy and advanced condition brings with it. In others it is partially vivified, but cannot flourish; it is clothed with the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches; but in minds that are fed with substantial know a them the passions and interests of men were the engrossing objects; but in Homer, 'Hesiod, and Theocritus, we may fairly expect to discover the amount of the ancients' perception of natural beauty, and their love of it. But in these how far is it behind what it is in the moderns! They were often enraptured with the pleasantness of nature, but it was seldom with more than its pleasantness. Their Elysian fields were composed of flowery meads, with pleasant trees and running waters, where the happy spirits led a life of luxurious repose. Their celebrated Arcadia is faithfully described in such Idyllia as those of Bion and Moschus; youths and damsels feeding their flocks amid the charms of a pastoral country, to whose beauties they were alive in proportion as they ministered to luxurious enjoyment. Beyond this they seldom looked,-seldom described the sublime aspects and Hophenomena of the universe. mer, indeed, is the greatest exception. His soul was cast in mighty mould. His beautiful description of a moonlight night is known to all readers. He speaks, too, of the splendour of the starry heavens; and he describes tempests with great majesty; but this rather as they are terrible in their effects on men, than as sublime in themselves. Minds even of the noblest class had not arrived at that full comprehension of nature which sees sublimity in the gloom and terror of tempests, independent of their effects; the grandeur of beauty in desolation itself; in splintered mountains, wild wildernesses, and the awfulness of solitude. They had not become tremblingly alive to all the lesser traces and shades of beauty in the face of nature; for they had not reached either of the extremities of perception,-the vast, on the one hand; minute perfection, on the other. They did not pursue the forms of beauty into leaf and flower; into the cheerful culture of the field, or the brown tinges of the desert. They did not watch the growing or fading lights of the sky, and the colours as they lived and died on the distant mountain tops; the passing of light and shadow over earth and ocean. Their acquaintance with the subtle spirit of the universe had not become so intimate. They abode most in the general; they admired in the mass; for they had not arrived at the refinement of very delicate or extensive analysis; and they did not go out to admire as the moderns. Their admiration of nature was not advanced, as with us, into an art and a passion. Beauty rather fell upon their senses than was inquired after. They were pleased, and did not always seek out the operative causes of their sensations. Their mention of their delight was, therefore, generally incidental. They were in the condition and state of mind of the old man in Wordsworth's ballad, who says, "Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum : " That Homer had an eye for the sublime features of earth, the nobler forms of animal life, and phenomena of nature, his bold and beautiful similes, scattered all through the Iliad, of storms, of overflowing rivers, of forests on flame, of the lion, the horse, and others, sufficiently testify that he had a most exquisite sense of the picturesque, is shown in almost every page of the Odyssey; in the cave of Polypheme, in good old King Laertes occupied in his farm; and in the whole episode of Eumeus, the goatherd. But yet it is, after all, only in contemplating some scene of delicious rural beauty, something akin to Arcadian sweetness, that he breaks out into any thing like a rapture. The abode of Calypso, as seen by Hermes on his approach to it, is an exact instance:— "Then, swift ascending from the azure wave, He took the path that winded to the cave. Large was the grot in which the nymph he found, The fair-hair'd nymph, with every beauty She sate and sung, the rocks resound the lays; Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile, Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle, While she with work and song the time divides, And through the loom the golden shuttle guides. Without the grot a various sylvan scene Appear'd around, and groves of living green; Poplars and alders, ever quivering, play'd, And nodding cypress form'd a grateful shade; Skins, caps, and coats, a rugged covering made; This was their wealth, their labour, and their trade. No pot to boil, no watch-dog to defend, On whose high branches, waving with the picturesque, nothing more boldly And scream aloft, and skim the deeps below. Four limpid fountains from the clifts distil; And glowing violets throw odours round: In Hesiod the perception of even the delights of the summer-field were far fainter. Though he fed his flock upon Mount Helicon, he has little to say in praise of its aspect; and though he gives you great insight into the state of agriculture, and the simple mode of life of the country people, a very few verses furnish almost all the praise of nature which he had to bestow. His mind seemed occupied in tracing the genealogy of the gods, and framing grave maxims for the regulation of human conduct. Of all the Greek writers, Theocritus is the one that luxuriates most in natural beauty. His sense of the picturesque is keen, and his penciling of such subjects is most vigorous and graphic. His two fishermen remind us of Crabbe; nothing can be more exquisite : "Two ancient fishers in a straw-thatch'd shed,Leaves were their walls, and sea-weed was their bed, Reclined their weary limbs; hard by were laid And nets of various sorts, and various snares, graphic and solemnly poetical, than the situation in which he makes Castor and Pollux find Anycus, the King of Bebrycia; nothing more striking than the image of that Chief: "Meanwhile the royal brothers devious stray'd Far from the shore, and sought the cooling shade. Hard by, a hill with waving forests crown'd, Sparkled like silver, and as silver clear. Had mark'd his face with many a desperate wound. Round as a globe and prominent his chest, Broad was his back, but broader was his breast; Firm was his flesh, with iron sinews fraught, Like some Colossus on an anvil wrought." Idyl. xxii. His description of an ancient drinking cup appears to me to have no rival in all the round of literature, ancient or modern, except Keats's description of an antique vase. It is life and beauty itself. The figures stand out in bold relief, cut with an energy and precision most wonderful, and with a grace that makes itself felt to the very depths of the spirit: "A deep two-handled cup, whose brim is crown'd With fruitless strife communicate their pains; Hard by, a fisherman, advanced in years, Intent he stands to' enclose the fish below, What a glorious subject would this be for one of our modern sculptors! Were I one, I would not lose an hour ere I attempted it. But in Theocritus, as in Homer, they are Arcadian amenities that engross almost all his passion for nature. They are flowery fields, running waters, summer shades, and the hum of bees; all the elements of voluptuous dreaming and indolent entrancement; the most delicious of all idleness, lying abroad with the blue sky above you, and the mossy turf beneath you, and the bubble of running waters, and the whisper of forest branches near, to lull you to repose. Is it not so? When is it that he invites you to out-of-door enjoyment? "Now when meridian beams inflame the day; Now when green lizards in the hedges lie; And crested larks forsake the fervid sky." Idyl. vii. And whither would he lead you at this sultry, blazing hour? Ah! hear him! "Here rest we: lo! cyperus decks the ground, Oaks lend their shade, and sweet bees murmur round Their honey'd hives; here, two cool fountains Here merrily the birds on branches sing; Ah! cunning Sicilian! well didst thou know where life shed its most delicious dreams. Anacreon at his wine was a novice in enjoyment to thee. Hark! to the very sounds which he conjures up! There is nothing startling, nothing exciting. No! there is enough of excitemen. already in the climate, in the summer heat, in the very scenes and persons from whose city-revels he has just withdrawn. The true se cret now is, to summon up only images of luxurious rest; of calm beauty; of refreshing coolness; that the blood, already running riot, may flow in the veins like the nectar of the gods, and send up to the brain images and trains of images of the very poetry of Elysium. Hark to the sounds about you! "Sweet low the herds along the pastured ground; Sweet is the vocal reed's melodious sound; Sweet pipes the jocund herdsman.” But I will give one more extract from him, which seems to combine all the fascinations he loved to paint, as existing in the summer woodlands : "He courteous bade us on soft beds recline Of lentesch and young branches of the vine; moan: The lark, the goldfinch, warbled lays of love, The rich ripe season gratified the sense We must pass over from the Greeks to the Romans; and I have found it so difficult to escape from Theocritus, that we must be short here. Of Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys, I will say nothing. We all know how they delighted in their country villas and gardens. We all know how Cicero, in his treatise on "Old Age," has declared his fondness for farming; and how, between his pleadings in the Forum, he used to seek the refreshment of a walk in a grove of plane-trees. We know how, during the best ages of the Commonwealth, their Generals and Dictators were brought from the plough and their country retreats: a fine feature in the Roman character, and one which may, in part, account for their so long retaining the simplicity of their tastes, and their tone of virtue. All this we know; but what is still more remarkable is, that Horace and Virgil, two of the most courtly poets that ever existed, yet were both passionately fond of the country, and perpetually declare in their writings that there is nothing in the splendour and fascinations of city life to compare with the serene felicity of a rural one. Horace is perpetually rejoicing over his Sabine farm; and Virgil has, in his Georgics, described all the rural economy of the age with a gusto that is felt in every line. His details fill us with admiration at the great resemblance of the science of these matters at that time, and at this. With scarcely any exception, in all modes of rural management, in all kinds of farming stock,-sheep, cattle, and horses, he would be now pronounced a consummate judge; and his rules for the culture of fields and gardens would serve for studies here, notwithstanding the difference of the Italian and English climates. But it is only in that celebrated passage beginning, "O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, Agricolas!" in his second Georgic, so often The swain who, free from business and debate, Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold. With foreign scents the sweetness of his oil: A harmless life that knows not how to cheat, Unvex'd with quarrels, undisturb'd by noise, The country king his peaceful realm enjoys. Ye sacred Muses! with whose beauty fired, My soul is ravish'd, and my brain inspired, Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear, Would you your poet's first petition hear; Give me the ways of wandering stars to know, The depths of heaven above, and earth below. But if my heavy blood restrain the flight Or lift me high to Hermus' hilly crown, Turn now to the modern world of literature; and what a blaze of light, what a warmth, what a spirit, what a passion bursts upon us! We step indeed into a new world. All here is glowing, clear in view, tender in feeling; full of a new, profound, popular, and yet domestic sentiment, hallowing and making more brotherly the bosoms of men. We are, in fact, as far advanced beyond the ancients in our knowledge of nature, as we are in that of the "life and immortality brought to light by the Gospel." With all the admiration of the ancients for the loveliness of nature, with all their enjoyment of its amenities, what is there in them like the hungering and thirsting, the yearning after her, which we find in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and a thousand other lights of modern literature? The mighty difference is, indeed, most strikingly manifested by comparing Longinus and Burke. The Palmyrian Secretary, amongst his five sources of the sublime, does not even include the influence of natural objects. His treatise is, indeed, more truly a treatise on writing strongly and elegantly, than on the sublime. Like the poets, he perceives the amenities of the country; but there is only one passage in his whole work in which he speaks out plainly of the sublimity of external nature. "The impulse of nature inclines to admire not a |