the love of the sublime and beautiful in nature more eminently developed in modern literature than in the classical.

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 in our own; if we look back into that of 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[306] can be more striking than the truth of this; and it is a curious matter of observation, that there should be this great 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 development 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.

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 choked with the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches; but in minds that are fed with substantial knowledge, and have their intellectual power reached, and their affections kindled by the blessedness of refined and 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. everywhere 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 at all advanced[307] 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 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 are 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 describe the sublime aspects and phenomena of the universe. homer, indeed, is the greatest exception,—his soul was cast in a 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 one hand—minute perfection on the other. they did not pursue the forms of beauty into leaf and flower; into the[308] 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 or 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

of things for ever speaking,

that nothing of itself will come,

but we must still be seeking?

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 shewn 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 ulysses at the lodge 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 anything 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-haired nymph, with every beauty crowned.

she sate and sung; the rocks resound the lays;

the cave was brightened with the rising blaze;

cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,

flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle,

while she with work and song the time divides,[309]

and through the loom the golden shuttle guides.

without the grot a various sylvan scene

appeared around, and groves of living green;

poplars and alders, ever quivering, played,

and nodding cypress formed a grateful shade;

on whose high branches, waving with the storm,

the birds of broadest wing their mansion form;

the chough, the sea-mew, and loquacious crow,

and scream aloft, and skim the deeps below.

depending vines the delving caverns screen,

with purple clusters blushing through the green.

four limpid fountains from the clefts distil;

and every fountain forms a separate rill,

in mazy, winding wanderings down the hill:

where bloomy meads with vivid greens were crowned,

and glowing violets threw odours round—

a scene, where if a god should cast his sight,

a god might gaze and wander with delight!

joy touched the messenger of heaven; he stayed

entranced, and all the blissful haunt surveyed.

odyssey, b. v.

in hesiod, the perception of even the delights of the summer field were far fainter. though he fed his flock at the foot of 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-thatched shed—

leaves were their walls, and sea-weed was their bed,

reclined their weary limbs; hard by were laid

baskets and all their implements of trade;

rods, hooks, and lines composed of stout horse-hairs,

and nets of various sorts, and various snares,

the seine, the cast-net, and the wicker maze,

to waste the watery tribe a thousand ways;[310]

a crazy boat was drawn upon a plank;

mats were their pillow, wove of osiers dank;

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,

yet blessed they lived with penury their friend;

none visited their shed, save, every tide,

the wanton waves that washed its tottering side.

idyl. xxi.

then again, nothing can be more picturesque, nothing more boldly 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 strayed

far from the shore, and sought the cooling shade.

hard by, a hill with waving forests crowned,

their eyes attracted; in the dale they found

a spring perennial in a rocky cave:

full to the margin flowed the lucid wave;

below small fountains gushed, and murmuring near,

sparkled like silver, and as silver clear.

above, tall pines and poplars quivering played,

and planes and cypress in dark greens arrayed;

around balm-breathing flowers of every hue,

the bees’ ambrosia, in the meadows grew.

there sate a chief, tremendous to the eye,

his couch the rock, his canopy the sky;

the gauntlet’s strokes his cheeks and ears around,

had marked 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.

id. 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’ 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 crowned

with ivy, joined with helichryse around;[311]

small tendrils with close-clasping arms uphold

the fruit rich speckled with the seeds of gold.

within, a woman’s well-wrought image shines,

a vest her limbs, her locks a cawl confines;

and near, two neat-curled youths in amorous strains,

with fruitless strife communicate their pains;

smiling, by turns she views the rival pair;

grief swells their eyes, their heavy hearts despair.

hard by, a fisherman, advanced in years,

on the rough margin of a rock appears;

intent he stands to enclose the fish below,

lifts a large net, and labours with the throw;

such strong expression rises on the sight,

you’d swear the man exerted all his might;

for his round neck with turgid veins appears—

in years he seems, yet not impaired by years.

a vineyard next with intersected lines,—

and red, ripe clusters load the bending vines.

to guard the fruit a boy sits idly by,

in ambush near two skulking foxes lie;

this, plots the branches of ripe grapes to strip,

and that, more daring, meditates the scrip;

resolved, ere long, to seize the savoury prey,

and send the youngster dinnerless away;

meanwhile on rushes all his art he plies,

in framing traps for grashoppers and flies;

and earnest only on his own designs,

forgets his satchel, and neglects his vines.

id. i.

what a glorious subject would this be for one of our modern sculptors.

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.

id. vii.

[312]

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 honeyed hives; here, two cool fountains spring;

here merrily the birds on branches sing;

here pines in clusters more umbrageous grow,

wave high their heads, and scatter cones below.

id. v.

ah! cunning sicilian! well didst thou know where life shed its most delicious dreams. anacreon at his wine, and tibullus in the rapture of one of his sweetest love-visions, was a novice in true enjoyment to thee. hark! to the very sounds which he conjures up! there is nothing startling—nothing exciting.—no! there is enough of excitement already in the climate, in the summer heat, in the very scenes and persons from whose city revels he has just withdrawn. the true secret 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;

poplars and elms above their foliage spread,

lent a cool shade, and waved the breezy head.

below, a stream, from the nymphs’ sacred cave,

in free meanders led its murmuring wave;

in the warm sunbeams, verdant shrubs among,

shrill grashoppers renewed their plaintive song;

at distance far, concealed in shades alone,

the nightingale poured forth her tuneful moan:

the lark, the goldfinch, warbled lays of love,

and sweetly pensive cooed the turtle-dove;

while honey-bees, for ever on the wing,

hummed round the flowers, and sipped the silver spring.[313]

the rich, ripe season gratified the sense

with summer’s sweets and autumn’s redolence.

apples and pears lay strewed in heaps around,

and the plum’s loaded branches kissed the ground.

id. vii.

well, we must pass over from the greeks to the romans, and i have found it so difficult to escape from theocritus, that we must make short work of it 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 that high tone of virtue which generally accompanies a daily intercourse with the spirit of nature. 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 an 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 nimiùm, sua si bona n?rint,

agricolas!

in his second georgic, so often quoted, that he seems to get into a[314] rapture when contemplating the charms of a country life. we may take this as a sufficient example, and as very delightful in itself.

oh happy, if he knew his happy state,

the swain who free from business and debate,

receives his easy food from nature’s hand,

and just returns of cultivated land.

no palace with a lofty gate he wants,

to admit the tide of early visitants,

with eager eyes, devouring as they pass,

the breathing figures of corinthian brass;

no statues threaten from high pedestals,

no persian arras hides his homely walls

with antic vests, which, through their shadowy fold,

betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.

he boasts no wool where native white is dyed

with purple poison of assyrian pride.

no costly drugs of araby defile,

with foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:

but easy quiet, a secure retreat,

a harmless life that knows not how to cheat,

with home-bred plenty the rich owner bless,

and rural pleasures crown his happiness.

unvexed with quarrels, undisturbed by noise,

the country king his peaceful realm enjoys.

****

ye sacred muses! with whose beauty fired,

my soul is ravished, and my brain inspired—

whose priest i am, whose holy fillets wear—

would you your poet’s first petition hear;

give me the way of wandering stars to know,

the depths of heaven above, and earth below.

****

but if my heavy blood restrain the flight

of my free soul, aspiring to the height

of nature, and unclouded fields of light—

my next desire is, void of care and strife,

to lead a soft, secure, inglorious life—

a country cottage near a crystal flood,

a winding valley, and a lofty wood.

some god conduct me to the sacred shades

where bacchanals are sung by spartan maids;

or lift me high to hemus’ hilly crown,

or in the plains of tempe lay me down,

or lead me to some solitary place,

and cover my retreat from human race.

[315]

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—a sentiment befitting “the large utterance of the early gods,” and yet 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, of such hearts as those of byron, wordsworth, coleridge, shelley, 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 little transparent rivulet that ministers to our necessities; but the nile, the ister, the rhine, or still more, the ocean. we are never surprised at the sight of a small fire that burns clearly, and blazes out on our private hearth; but view with amaze the celestial fires, though they are often obscured by vapours and eclipses. nor do we reckon anything in nature more wonderful than the boiling furnaces of etna, which cast out stones, and sometimes whole rocks from their labouring abyss, and pour out whole rivers of liquid and unmingled flame.”

see how burke has expanded and worked out this glimpse of the true view. he is full of the mighty influence of nature’s sublime features. her heights and depths, her horrors and glooms, the demonstrations of her power and grandeur in storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes. infinity and eternity are all before him in their awful majesty, and furnish him with some of his deepest sources and most splendid illustrations of the sublime.

but the fact must be evident to every one. a single glance[316] from the ancients to the moderns, and what a contrast! throughout all the writings of the most enthusiastic ancients, where are the burning, passionate longings after nature that are transfused through all our modern literature? nature is not with us a thing incidentally alluded to,—a thing to be voluptuously enjoyed when we find ourselves in the flowery lap of may; ours is a living, permeating, perpetual affection. we seek after communion with her as one of the highest enjoyments of our existence; we seek it to soothe the ruffling of our spirits; to calm our world-vexed hearts; to fill us with the divine presence and overshadowing of beauty. the love of her is with us a daily attraction; the knowledge of her a daily pursuit; we have advanced her cognizance and admiration into a science. our naturalists feel the breathings of a celestial spirit come from her secret shrines, even while they are seeking after and arranging her lesser forms and productions. our romance writers dip their pens in her hues to cast a fascination upon their narratives; and our travellers climb every mountain, traverse every sea, explore every distant region, to catch fresh glimpses of her beauty. true, many of these may not, and do not, feel all the attachment they profess—there are thousands who do but affect it, as they do any other fashion; but their very imitation, and their very number, do homage to the great worship of the age.

but it is through our poetry that the admiration of nature is diffused as one great soul. from chaucer to the most recent poet, it is the universal spirit. it would seem a contradiction now, to say that a man is a poet, but that he has no ardent feeling for nature. in fact, a new language, a new kind of inspiration, distinguish the modern poets from the ancients altogether. great as each may respectively be, their object, their vision, and their tone in this particular, are widely opposed. when do we find one of the classical writers, speaking thus of his youth?

like a roe

i bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides

of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,

wherever nature led; more like a man

flying from something that he dreads, than one

who sought the thing he loved. for nature then,

to me was all in all—i cannot paint[317]

what then i was. the sounding cataract

haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,

the mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

their colours and their forms were then to me

an appetite, a feeling, and a love,

that had no need of a remoter charm

by thought supplied, or any interest

unborrowed of the eye.

wordsworth.

we should be startled to hear an ancient exclaim, like shelley:

magnificent!

how glorious art thou earth! and if thou be

the shadow of some spirit lovelier still,

though evil stain its work, and it should be,

like its creation, weak yet beautiful,

i could fall down and worship that and thee.

even now my heart adoreth. wonderful!

what would be our astonishment, if we were to stumble in an ancient poet, upon stanzas like these?

i live not in myself, but i become

portion of that around me; and to me

high mountains are a feeling, but the hum

of human cities torture; i can see

nothing to loathe in nature, save to be

a link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,

and with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain

of ocean or the stars, mingle and not in vain.

and thus i am absorbed, and this is life!

i look upon the peopled desert past,

as on a place of agony and strife

where for some sin, to sorrow i was cast.

to act and suffer, but remount at last

with a fresh pinion; which i feel to spring,

though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast

which it would cope with, on delighted wing

spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.

and when, at length, the mind shall all be free

from what it hates in this degraded form,

reft of its carnal life, save what shall be

existent happier in the fly and worm,—[318]

when elements to elements conform,

and dust is what it should be, shall i not

feel all i see, less dazzling, but more warm?

the bodiless thought, the spirit of each spot,

of which, even now, i share at times the immortal lot?

are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part

of me and of my soul, as i of them?

is not the love of these deep in my heart

with a pure passion? shall i not contemn

all objects, if compared with these? and stem

a tide of suffering rather than forego

such feelings, for the hard and worldly phlegm

of those whose eyes are only turned below,

gazing upon the ground, with thoughts that dare not glow?

to quote all that bears evidence of this wonderful revolution in the very heart of literature would be, not to quote indeed, but to take the whole mass of modern poetry. powerfully as the spirit of the ancients was attracted by the sublimity of mortal passion and mortal fortunes; by the strife of families and nations, by the strife of emotions in the soul, and the out-bursting of a blasting or a beneficent sublimity in the deeds of men; and magnificent as are the monuments of tragic or heroic grandeur they have erected on this foundation,—so powerfully is the spirit of the moderns drawn, excited, and inflamed by the sublimity of nature, and beautiful and endearing are the strains it has elicited. and whence is this mighty change? ay, that is the question. whence is it that the love of nature has, in the latter ages, become so much more passionate, intense, engrossing, refined, elevated, etherealized? is it because we see nature with different eyes? is it that we see something in it that the classics did not? it is! it is to that omnipotent principle that has so utterly changed the whole system of human philosophy, morals, politics, literature, and social life—the hopes, the fortunes, the reasonings of men, that we owe it. it is to christianity! the veil which was rent asunder in the hour that its divine founder consummated his mission, was plucked away not only from the heart of man, not only from the immortality of his being, but from the face of nature. a mystery and a doubt which had hung athwart the sky like a vast and gloomy cloud, was withdrawn, and man beheld creation as the assured work of god:[319] saw a parental hand guiding, sustaining, and embellishing it: and immediately felt himself brought into a near kinship with it, and into an everlasting sympathy with all that was beautiful around him,—not simply for the beauty itself, but because it was the work of the one great father—the one great fountain of all life and blessing.

the very introduction to the hebrew literature in the old testament, must have produced a deep and delightful change in human feeling. the contrast between the sentiment and the very language of nature, as addressed to man in the literature of the greeks and that of the hebrews, was startling, warming and wonderful beyond measure. the beauty of natural objects was no longer a thing apart;—a thing to be admired on its own account; it was allied to a deep sentiment, it became linked to the life of our inner nature. waters were beheld as the bountiful blessing of him “who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the field.” they became the emblem of that inward purity of which the noblest pagan could form no adequate conception, but which the god of the hebrews required. they symbolized many of the evils, as well as the refreshments of life. now they typified, “brethren that deal deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks that pass away; which are brackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid:” now, they were as the billows of affliction,—scenes of trouble—“all thy billows have gone over me:” and now they were as the refreshment of a thirsty soul. the greenness of the grass and of the branch pointed to the beauty, the fleeting beauty of life; and now to the insecure prosperity of the unjust:—“he is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his garden; his roots are wrapped about the heap, and he seeth the place of stones. if he destroy him from his place, then it shall deny him, saying i have not seen him. behold this is the joy of his way, and out of the earth shall others grow.”

every thing in nature, the flower—the wind—the spider’s web—darkness and light—calm and tempest—drought and flood—the shadow and the noon-day heat—a great rock in a weary land—every thing about us, and above us, acquired in this splendid and inimitable literature, a new and touching meaning; a meaning[320] bound up with our lives; a worth coeval with our highest hopes, or most fervent desires. every thing became a moral and a warning. they were made to illustrate not only the operations of providence, but to cast a new light upon our intellectual being. they did not, indeed, speak out as to the exact value stamped upon man by the deity, but they gave intimations more profound and startling than anything in the whole round of pagan philosophy. and then, there was an undertone of sorrow, a voice of plaintive regret over man—a delicacy and tenderness of phrase that wonderfully attracted and endeared. what ineffable melancholy is there in these following sentiments! what an intense longing after life, and yet, what a longing for death! what a vivid feeling of the grinding evils of mortal being; and what images of the fulness of peace in the grave!—“why died i not from the womb? for now should i have lain still, and been quiet; i should have slept: then had i been at rest. with kings and counsellors of the earth, which had built desolate places for themselves; or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver; or, as a hidden, untimely birth, i had not been; as infants which never saw the light. there the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest. there the prisoners rest together, they hear not the voice of the oppressor. the small and the great is there; and the servant is free from his master. wherefore is light given to him that is in misery; and life unto the bitter in soul? which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures? which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave?” job iii. 11-22.

but this new alliance with nature; this new and spiritual beauty cast upon every thing, was not all. the magnificence of creation and its phenomena were made tenfold conspicuous; and still beyond this, men were no longer left to suppose, or even to contend that the world was the workmanship of deity. they were no longer left to bewilder themselves amongst a host of imaginary gods,—the universe in its majesty, and god—the one sublime and eternal founder and preserver of it, were flashed upon the spiritual vision in the broadest and brightest light. here was seen the clear and continuous history of creation:—god, the sole and immortal, sate upon the circle of the world, and its inhabitants[321] were as grashoppers before him. the sun, moon, and stars were of his ordaining and appointing; night and day, times and seasons, revolved before him; his were the cattle on a thousand hills; his all the swarming tribes of humanity. the prophetic writings proclaimed his deity, his power and attributes, in language unparalleled in splendour, and with imagery which embraced all that is glorious, resplendent, beautiful and soothing, or dark, desolate and withering, in nature.

such was the effect of the old testament;—and then came the new!—then came christ! the old shewed us the deity in unspeakable majesty;—his creation as beautiful and sublime;—christ proclaimed him the father of men; and in those words poured on earth a new light. the words which guaranteed the eternity of our spirits, chased a dimness from the sky which had hung there from the days of adam: they rent down the curtains of death and oblivion, and let fall upon earth such a tide of sunshine as never warmed it till then. the atmosphere of heaven gushed down to earth. from that hour a new and inextinguishable interest was given us in nature. it was the work of our father: it was the birthplace of millions of everlasting souls. its hills and valleys then smiled in an ethereal beauty, for they were then to our eyes spread out by a mighty and tender parent for our happy abodes. the waters ran with a voice of gladness; the clouds sailed over us with a new aspect of delight; the wind blew, and the leaves fluttered in it, and whispered everywhere of life—eternal consciousness—eternal enjoyment of intellect and of love. through all things we felt a portion of the divine, paternal spirit diffused, and “the wilderness and the solitary place” thenceforth had a language for our hearts full of the holy peace and the revelations of eternity. then the musing poet felt, what it has been reserved for one in our day only fully to express:—

a presence that disturbed him with the joy

of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

of something far more deeply interfused,

whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

and the round ocean, and the living air,

and the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

a motion and a spirit that impels

all thinking things, all objects of all thought,[322]

and rolls through all things. therefore is he still

a lover of the meadows and the woods

and mountains; and of all that we behold

from this green earth: of all the mighty world

of eye and ear, both what they half create

and what perceive; well pleased to recognise

in nature and the language of the sense,

the anchor of his purest thoughts; the nurse,

the guide, the guardian of his heart, and soul

of all his moral being.

thus, then, is dissipated the mystery of the more intense love of nature evinced by the moderns than the ancients. it is but part of that gift of divine revelation which has endowed us with so many other advantages over those grand old philosophers of antiquity, who in the depths of their hearts, darkened and abused by many an hereditary superstition, yet found some of the unquenched embers of that fire of love and knowledge originally kindled there by the creator, and cherished and fanned them into a noble flame. had they heard from heaven these living words pronounced—god is love!—had they seen the great ladder of revelation reared from earth to heaven, and been permitted to trace every radiant step by which man is allowed to ascend from these lower regions into the blaze of god’s own paradise, their spirits would have kindled into as intense a glow as ours, and their vision have become as conscious of surrounding glories. god is love! these are words of miraculous power. once assured that the very principle and source of all life is love, and that it is destined to cast its beams on our heads through eternal ages, we become filled with a felicity beyond the power of earthly evil. all those intimations that creation itself had given us, are confirmed. we feel the influence of the great principle of beneficence in the joy of our own being; in the cheerfulness of surrounding humanity; in the voices and songs of happy creatures; in the face of earth, and the lights of heaven. seas, mountains, and forests, all become imbued with beauty as they are contemplated in love; and their aspects and their sounds fill us with sensations of happiness. when we read in the ph?don of plato, the few and feeble grounds, as they now appear to us, on which that good old socrates raised his arguments for the immortality of the soul; when we hear his[323] exultation on discovering in anaxagoras the principle laid down, that “the divine intellect was the cause of all beings,” we feel with what deep transport he would have witnessed the gates of eternity set wide by the divine hand; and in what hues of heaven the very circumstance would have invested all about him. yes! the only difference between modern literature and that of the ancients, lies in our grand advantage over them in this particular. it is from the literature of the bible, and the heirship of immortality laid open to us in it, that we owe our enlarged conceptions of natural beauty, and our quickened affections towards the handiworks of god. we walk about the world as its true heirs, and heirs of far more than it has to give. we walk about in confidence, in love, and in peaceful hope; for we know that we are the rightful sons of the house; and that neither death nor distance can interrupt our progress towards the home-paradise of the divine father.