tailed analysis of animal and vegetable forms, so each region of the earth has a natural physiognomy peculiar to itself. The idea indicated by the painter by expressions such as "Swiss nature," "Italian sky," &c., rests on a partial perception of this local character in the aspect of nature. The azure of the sky, the lights and shadows, the haze resting on the distance, the forms of animals, the succulency of the plants and herbage, the brightness of the foliage, the outline of the mountains, are all elements which determine the total impression characteristic of each district or region. George Forster, in the narrative of his voyages, and in his other publications,-Goethe, in the descriptions of nature which so many of his immortal works contain,-Buffon, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand, have traced with inimitable truth of description the character of some of the zones into which the earth is divided. Not only do such descriptions afford us mental enjoyment of a high order, but the knowledge of the character which nature assumes in different regions is, moreover, intimately connected with the history of man and of his civilisation. For although the commencement of this civilisation is not solely determined by physical relations, yet the direction which it takes, the national character, and the more grave or gay dispositions of men, are dependent in a very high degree on climatic influences. How powerfully have the skies of Greece acted on its inhabitants ! The nations settled in the fair and happy regions bounded by the Euphrates, the Halys, and the Ægean sea, also early attained amenity of manners and delicacy of sentiment. When in the middle ages religious enthusiasm suddenly re-opened the sacred East to the nations of Europe who were sinking back into barbarism, our ancestors in returning to their homes brought with them gentler manners, acquired in those delightful valleys. The poetry of the Greeks, and the ruder songs of the primitive northern nations, owe great part of their peculiar character to the aspect of the plants and animals seen by the bard, to the mountains and valleys which surrounded him, and to the air which he breathed. And to recall more familiar objects, who does not feel himself differently affected in the dark shade of the beech, on hills crowned with scattered fir-trees, or on the turfy pasture, where the wind rustles in the trembling foliage of the birch? These trees of our native land have often suggested or recalled to our minds images and thoughts, either of a melancholy, of a grave and elevating, or Ꮓ of a cheerful character. The influence of the physical on the moral world, that reciprocal and mysterious action and reaction of the material and the immaterial,-gives to the study of nature, when regarded from higher points of view, a peculiar charm, still too little recognised. Many of the enjoyments which Nature affords are wanting to the nations of the North. Many constellations, and many vegetable forms—and of the latter, those which are most beautiful (palms, tree ferns, plantains, arborescent grasses, and the finelydivided feathery foliage of the Mimosas)—remain for ever unknown to them. Individual plants languishing in our hot-houses can give but a very faint idea of the majestic vegetation of the tropical zone. But the high cultivation of our languages, the glowing fancy of the poet, and the imitative art of the painter, open to us sources whence flow abundant compensations, and from whence our imagination can derive the living image of that more vigorous nature which other climes display. In the frigid North, in the midst of the barren heath, the solitary student can appropriate mentally all that has been discovered in the most distant regions, and can create within himself a world free and imperishable as the spirit by which it is conceived. SELECT EXTRACTS FROM THE POETS CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. SPENSER. SPENSER was born in London in 1553, and died in 1599. His principal work is called "The Faerie Queen." His poems "exhibit at once exquisite sweetness and felicity of language, a luxuriant beauty of imagination which has hardly ever been surpassed, and a tenderness of feeling never elsewhere conjoined with an imagination so vivid."-Spalding. UNA AND THE LION. YET she, most faithful lady, all this while Far from all people's crowd, as in exile, Through that late vision which the enchanter wrought, Through woods and wastenes1 wide him daily sought, One day, nigh weary of the irksome way, From her unhasty beast she did alight; 1 Wastes. |