“O my Native Land! How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy To me, who from the lakes and mountain hills, Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas, Have drunk in all my intellectual life, All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts, All adoration of the God in nature, All lovely all honorable things, Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel The joy and greatness of its future being! There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul Unborrowed from my country.” Coleridge.

God made the human soul illustrious, and designed it for exalted pursuits and a glorious destiny. To expand our finite faculties, and afford them a culture both profound and elevating, Nature is spread around us, with all its stupendous proportions, and Revelation speaks to us of an eternal augmentation of knowledge hereafter, for weal or for woe. 0122Above, beneath, and on every side, open the avenues of infinite progression, through which we are to advance without pause, and expand without limit. Here, in this dim arena of earth, an immortal essence throbs at our heart in harmony with the infinite and eternal. The day-star of thought arises on the soul, and, with our first national exercise, begins an existence which may experience many vicissitudes, may pass through many transitions, but can never terminate. The soul, vivified with the power to think, will outlive the universe which feeds its thought, and will be still practising its juvenile excursions at the mere outset of its opening career, while suns and systems, shorn of their glories, shall sink, in shattered ruins, to the caverns of eternal oblivion. The two great capacities, correspondent to the two great natural elements alluded to above,—the power of perceiving the beautiful and the feeling the sublime,—are at once the products and proofs of inherent immortality. They indicate endowments which it is bliss to improve, and a destiny which it will be fearful indeed to neglect.

All sentient beings may have an eye that can see, and an ear that can hear; but to be gifted with a heart that can feel, constitute the chief characteristics of a living soul. Animals are created perfect, while mankind are made perfectible by virtue of loftier capacities. Instinct is compelled to pause over what it dimly perceives, but mind perpetually quickens its vision, as well as its speed, through the magnificent unfoldings of its unbounded progress. The senses educate the capabilities. Our lower nature is first susceptible to impression; and from this source, at very early period, influences arise which, when once stereotyped upon the soul, are ineffaceable forever. What is the destiny of that little stranger, just emerged from mysterious night into life active and eternal? What is to be the history of that glimmering spark, struck from nothingness by the all-creating rock,and filled with a fulness of being that will shine when the stars are 0133extinct? Soon its faculties will unfold to external influences. As yet its germs of consciousness lie smothered under the passive and mortal powers; but as these are made the avenues of moral health or disease in early culture, that tremendous existence which lies before the unconscious babe will prove a blessing or a curse. In relation to every young denizen of earth, it is an important reflection, that having once felt, it retains that feeling; the emotion of pleasure it has experienced, thenceforth belongs to itself, and will recur with increased energy; that the pain it has once known belongs to itself, and may go on deepening its pungency forever. Glory or infamy is but a different direction of the same capacities. Soon from that youthful mind will come gleamings of thought and ebullitions of passion, and those same effervescing endowments may form a Catiline or a Cicero. The Neros and Herods, Newtons and Pauls, the scourges of earth, and its greatest benefactors, were once helpless infants.

To our mind, this book on American Scenery has an import of the highest order. The diversified landscapes of our country exert no slight influence in creating our character as individuals, and in confirming our destiny as a nation. Oceans, mountains, rivers, cataracts, wild woods, fragrant praries, and melodious winds, are elements and exemplifications of that general harmony which subsists throughout the universe, and which is most potent over the most valuable minds. Every material object was designed for the use and reward of genius, to be turned into an intelligible hieroglyphic, and the memento of purest love. How strong this early influence and affection may become, it is difficult to say. Hills, valleys, brooks, trees—our first and fondest friends beyond the domestic heart—are never forgotten. Memory recalls the sunny days of childhood and youth; and, like the green spot in the desert, in which the weary traveller lingers with delight, his toils and privations half forgotten, we love to ramble again amidst 0144the scenes of earliest emotion and purest thought, rejoicing still that, wherever exiled, “Trees, and flowers, and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt, Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart will recognition of their looks.”

We proceed to show that, in the physical universe, what is the most abundant, is most ennobling; what is most exalted, is most influential on the best minds; and that, for these reasons, national intellect receives a prevailing tone from the peculiar scenery that most abounds.

First, in the kingdoms of matter around us, what is most abundant in amount, is most ennobling in use. The mighty magician, Nature, produces the greatest variety of striking effects with the fewest means. There are only a sun, soil, rocks, trees, flowers, water, and an observing soul. Everything in use depends upon this last, wether to the contemplator “love lends a precious seeing to the eye.” Deep in the concave of heaven is the luminary revealing all; and deep in the soul of the illumined is a chord tenderly vibrating to the charms of all. The voices of every order of moving things, the silvery tones of flowing streams, the trembling tongues of leaves, the inarticulate melody of flowers, the vibrations of mighty hills and the dread music of the spheres, all sublunary blending with all celestial notes, are not for a moment lost to the heart that listens. The harp of Memnon is not fabulous, properly interpreted. The devout lover of nature, seated on the mountain, or by the ocean, bathed in the golden sheen of opening day, will have his soul often stirred by melody divine as ever resounded from the mysterious harmonicon by the waters of the Nile.

Every rational inhabitant of earth is a focal point in the universe, a profoundly deep centre around which every thing beautiful and sublime is arranged, and towards which, through the exercise of admiration, every refining influence is drawn. Wonderful indeed, is the radiant thread that runs through every realm of outward creation, and enlinks all their diversified influences with the innermost fibres of the soul. This is the vital nerve by virtue of which the individual is related to the universe, and the universe is equally related to the individual. Through this, all physical powers combine to relieve spiritual wants. Earth contributes her fulness of wealth and majesty; air ministers in all the Protean aspects of beauty and sublimity; fire, permeating every thing graceful and fair, gleams before the scrutinizing eye with a light more vivid than the lightning's blaze; and water is not only “queen of a thousand rills that fall in silver from the dewy stone,” diffusing a “dulcet and harmonious breath” from the most sylvan haunts of man to his most crowded home, but from continent to continent “pours the deep, eternal bass in nature's anthem, making music such as charms the ear of God.”

In this abundance there is an infinite variety, adapted to every grade of intellect, and every condition in life. The book of nature, which is the art of God, as Revelation is the word of his divinity, unfolds its innumerable leaves, all illuminated with glorious imagery, to the vision of his creature, man, and is designed to elevate or soothe him by such influences as emanate from foaming cataracts, glassy lakes, and floating mists. For this beneficent purpose, fields bloom, forests wave, mountains soar, caverns open their jewelled mines, constellations sparkle, clouds spread their variegated drapery, the sun radiates from horizon to zenith, and billows roll from pole to pole. In spring, all is vivacious with an overflowing newness of life; in summer, gorgeous is the world to every eye; autumn mellows at once the landscape with 0166its harvests, and the hearts that love every form of matured and prolific worth; even winter, deserted as may be her temple of the thoughtless and vain, suggests, through hoar-frost and withered leaves, lessons of greatest value to votaries who evermore aspire to be truly wise.

Sir Joshua Reynolds has said that “Nature denies her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils;” but a great deal depends upon the motives with which we enter her school. It will be to a low purpose, surely, if our investigations are conducted in a predominantly utilitarian spirit, recognizing in the laws according to which the Divinity works merely the handmaids to sensual indulgence, rather than the instruments of the noblest use. It is thus that nature is made to present herself to gross minds, not as a quiet and awful temple, but as a plenteous kitchen, or voluptuous banqueting-hall. By this we do not mean that the sentiments which elevate are ever unnatural. Nature is most truly herself when she stands revealed to her votary in the most refined and suggestive form. The Apollo Belvidere is indescribably more natural than any rustic of Teniers, or any allegorical figure of Rubens. The master-scenes of nature, however, like the masterpieces of transcendent art, require for the inexperienced, yet earnest admirer, an interpreter; to the lukewarm and careless they are ever partially, if not completely, incomprehensible. Like certain delicate plants, their essential beauties shrink under rough handling, and become dimness to the profanity of a casual glance; they unveil themselves most fully to the enraptured, and pour the effulgence of their splendid mysteries into the fixed eye of him only who gazes on the charms he has studiously sought, and adores for their own dear sake. Thus employed, the most copious productions of God exert the most ennobling influence. They quicken thought and inspire humility, thus verifying the experience of the poet: 0177 “I moved on In low and languid mood: for I had found That outward forms, the loftiest, still received Their finer influence from the Life within.”

In viewing magnificent scenes, the soul, expanded and sublimed,is imbued with a spirit of divinity, and appears, as it were, associated with the Deity himself. For, as the shepherd feels himself ennobled, while communing with his sovereign, the beholder, in a far nobler degree, feels himself advanced to a higher scale in the creation, in being permitted to see and admire the grandest of nature's works. All vigorous souls prize most highly that healthy and expansive exercise of mind which is attained chiefly by traversing rugged paths and scaling celestial heights, in order to breathe pure and bracing air. To the query whether beneficial effects actually attend such excursions, let Sydney Smith reply: “I, for one, strongly believe in the affirmative of the question,—that Nature speaks to the mind of man immediately in beautiful and sublime language; that she astonishes him with magnitude, appals him with darkness, cheers him with splendor, soothes him with harmony, captivates him with emotion, enchants him with fame; she never intended man should walk among her flowers, and her fields, and her streams, unmoved; nor did she rear the strength of the hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest, and dashing over the crumbling rock. I would as soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as I would deny beauty or sublimity to belong to its qualities.”

Mind is itself the strongest agency over mind; and next to this, in dignity and worth, is the potency of such inanimate productions as are pleasing in their aspect, or awe-inspiring in their form. This is 0188an influence which effectively appeals to the spirits of our race in every condition of life. Wherever the faintest ray of intelligence has dawned, thither does it come, and there with ever increasing dominion dwell. The savage is not too rude, nor the child too infantile, to be either refined or fortified by its lessons. Nature is an element which cannot be excluded, and which ought to be so directed as to produce the most agreeable and beneficent results. True, venerable mountains and verdant plains, with all their terrors and all their glories, are but pictures to be blind and music to the deaf, when a perceiving eye and appreciating soul are wanting. But with these endowments in exercise, however dim, dwellers, in the midst of bold scenery are harder workers, greater readers, and better thinkers, than persons of equal rank elsewhere. Through the serene medium of their lofty elevation, they are less impressed by the pettiness of man and his affairs, than by the graceful magnitude of what the Almighty has spread through infinite fields around. Living with supreme delight far above a Lilliputian standard, the mind swells into something of the colossal grandeur it admires. A majestic landscape, often scanned and truly loved, imparts much of its greatness to the mind and heart of the spectator; so that while the species may dwindle in relative worth, the individual is ennobled by the expansion he has received. Even a transient visit to localities strongly characterized by what is intrinsically elegant or grand ,leaves the noblest impression on susceptible souls. Charles Lamb relates, with his accustomed happy style, that on returning to his desk at the India House, after a brief sojourn amidst the Hills and Lakes of Westmoreland, he thought much less highly of himself than while invested with the mingled beauty and majesty of magnificent mountain scenery. Well might his loving school-fellow and great brother in devotion to Nature's charms, Coleridge, say, in addressing his little child: 0199 “I was rear'd In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim, And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself: Great universal teacher! He shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.”

Thus far our first point, namely, that, in the outward creation, whatever is most abundant is most ennobling in its influence on our inner faculties. In the second place, we proceed to show, that the noblest aspects and energies of nature have the finest and firmest control over the best minds.

All eminent geniuses are close observers of rural objects, and enthusiastic admirers of imposing scenery. There can be no approximation towards universal development, save as one lays the entire universe under contribution to his personal cultivation. He must absorb into his expander soul resources from every kingdom competent to render him a sovereign indeed over the realms of emotion and though. He that would fortify a giant arm to sever an isthmus or tunnel mountains, as a pathway for the nations, or wield a giant mind that can quicken and mould the sentiments of other men gigantic like himself, must habitually feed on that aliment which is won in stray gifts by whosoever will find, and which, when attained, constitutes “a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets where no crude surfeit 02010reigns.” The public man whose sphere is most comprehensive, and whose exhausting toils are most distracting, will probably be indebted to youthful and serener avocations in humbler scenes for his sweetest solace and most enduring strength. The experience and sagacity of a great philosopher justify this assertion: “I speak, sir, of those who, though bred up under our unfavorable system of education, have yet held, at time, some intercourse with Nature, and with those great minds those works have been moulded by the spirit of Nature: who, therefore, when they pass from the seclusion and constraint of early study, bring with them, into the new scene of that world, much of the pure sensibility which is the spring of all that is greatly good in thought and action.”

All great passions are fed, and all great systems are projected in solitude. Wide and dense masses of mankind form the appropriate field whereon superior talents are to be exercised; but, to the aspiring, the distraction and attrition of large cities are rather evils to be shunned, since they vitiate if not destroy that purity and calm which are essential to the best growth of mind. The predestined hero in moral warfare will avoid the broad and boisterous way, if he be wise; and, like the Pythagoreans of old, he will betake himself to some sequestered spot, there alone to mature the vigor of his thoughts. If he would elicit a train of sentiments the profoundest and best, let him wander through the shady walks and silent groves of the country, where all things tend to arm and elevate the soul. The song of birds and hum of bees will not profitless fall on his ear. Fields enamelled with verdure, and trees clothed in garments almost divine, the stillness of nature in her secret glens, and the awful import of her more vocal majesty, must recall the universal Creator in modes the most palpable to a meditative pupil in this university for all designed, and at the same time will most imbue him with the immense repose with which 02111creation is crowned. Forms of glory hovering over forest and field, on the river's bank, the lake's brim, ocean's strand, or around mountain-peaks, create glorious forms in admiring souls. They confer an inspiration which kindles afresh over each new object worthy of esteem, and forever keep burning on the altar of the heart a flame which infinitude perpetually draws near both to purify and feed. It is our bliss to cherish those early recollections, without which all others are null and void, and which should be wedded to memory forever. “You of all names the sweetest and the best; You Muses, Books, and Liberty, and Rest; You Gardens, Fields, and Woods.”

It is no valid objection to our argument to remind us that some “misuse the bounteous Pan, and think the gods amiss.” That is to quote the perversion of a privilege, and not its legitimate use. Petrarch, for instance, only aggravated the fires that consumed him, when he buried himself in the lonely recesses of Vaucluse. But had he gone there to study “the quaint mossiness of aged roots” by day, and at night gazed with acutest sympathy upon “the star of Jove, so beautiful and large,”—instead of tamely succumbing before “the patient brilliance of the moon;” had he been ambitious rather to “live in the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds,” he might, on the bleakest summit, and with a richer facility than in the pampered palace, have created “Eschylean shapes of the sublime,” and been imbued with energies nobler far than ever graced the marble porch where wisdom was wont to teach with Socrates and Tully. It has been among deserts, on islands, in caverns, or when hidden by other drapery of seclusion the most opaque, that philosophers, statesmen, and heroes, have obtained 02212that faith and fervor by which they secured truimphant success in the end, even though martyrdom was their road.

The best education consists in the most thorough training of natural energy. In all moral architecture, as in material, the elegant should rest on the substantial, and clearly indicate the firmness it adorns. Large portions of a temple admit of being highly polished, but he would not be a very wise builder who should set about his structure with nothing but polishings. They who have “yellowed themselves among rolls and records” are not generally the persons who exert the most salutary influence, and make the most indelible impress on mankind. On the contrary, happiest and mightiest are they who are born and reared where free course is allowed to the influences with which creative power has benignantly surrounded us. “Happy they who are located in the true infant-school of God and Nature; on whom this grand moving panorama sheds all its changing lights, and bestows all its successive scenes; who watch the revolving stars, and the progression of bright constellations, in no bounded horizon; for whom there are the infinite effects, daily and nightly, of sunlight and moonlight, over hill and plain,—better still if the vast ocean add its shifting colors and the accompaniment of its continuous and resounding anthem; to whom a hundred birds and plants, in rapid succession, tell of advancing spring; whose months the flowers calendar; whose autumn is infallibly marked by the ripened grain and the sheaves of joyous harvest; who make an era in the few years of their chronology by some more memorable storm or severer frost; and who change their sport and occupations with changing nature, receiving through every inlet the influences of God's spirit, and rejoicing in all. Not that children can feel the beauty or the grandeur, still less dive into the wisdom of this mighty scheme of things, but the the stimulus is on them, the novelty is adapted to and excites 02313them; Nature has her way within them as well as parents and teachers; and the senses do such duty as in the crowded city school-room they never yet performed nor ever can. And thus they go on from infancy to youth, growing in the best knowledge of humanity; a knowledge of the world in which God has placed them; and thereby becoming fit to grapple with the difficulties and triumph in the moral conflicts that will present themselves in maturer life, as they come into the world that man has fashioned.”

The superiority of nature over art, as a source of pleasure and profits, is worthy of special note. When we enter magnificent monuments of human skill, we are at first struck with the costly decorations of wood, pigments, marble, and gold. But after repeated views, we feel no longer charmed, and the mental pleasure received at the first glance is continually decreased. Whereas, in contemplating the works of nature, from the minutest specimen to the most majestic, and most powerfully when the sense of perception is armed with greatest clearness and force, the devotee feels that the luxury of observation is constantly enhanced. The prospect of the country never satiates us; the landscape, with all its changes, is ever new, and every day invests it with some fresh aspect to delight and invigorate the mind. Love of natural objects, and especially a preference for whatever makes scenery of the wilder or more romantic kind, is a prevailing element in all character of the most marked and practical use. There is down upon the breast of eagles; and the strongest men have usually the gentlest natures, because they habitually live in intimate and affectionate alliance with the mildest as well as mightiest influence. As an elephant crashes through jungles and over crags, whetting his tusks, and as the imperial bird of prey seeks some storm-worn summit to sharpen his talons, so every one, quick to feel and invincible to subdue, like Achilles, will court retirement in great nature's quiet nooks, where he 02414may recruit his mental strength and string his bow. Archimedes, a man of stupendous genius, was accustomed to say, that, next to the solution of a problem, was the pleasure of an evening walk in the suburbs of Syracuse. Descartes, having settled the place of a planet in the morning, would amuse himself in the evening by weeding and watering a bed of flowers. Gray, one of the most intellectual and fastidious of men, says, “Happy they who can create a rose-tree, or erect a honey-suckle; who can watch the brood of a hen, or a fleet of their own ducklings as they sail upon the water.” The love of nature is, indeed, instinctive in all superior minds. Philosophers living in the time of Philostratus were accustomed to retire to shades of Mount Athos, where “Meditation might think down hours to moments.” Catullus, Martial, and Statius were ardent admirers of rural life; especially so were Atticus, Tacitus, and Epictetus. Cicero, who valued himself more upon his taste for the cultivation of philosophy, than upon his talents for oratory, had no less than eighteen-different country residences in various parts of his beautiful native land. He speaks of them in terms of fondest attachment; and they were all situated in such delightful points of view, as to deserve being called “the eyes of Italy.” The retreat of Tusculum was his favorite residence. It was the most elegant mansion of that elegant age; and the beauty of the landscape around it, adding a higher worth to the site than all the charms Atticus could purchase for its master at Athens, to the highest degree refined the taste of its accomplished possessor. When, fatigued with business, and happy in being allowed the indulgence of sequestered recreation, the great master of the Forum, “from whose lips sweet eloquence distilled, as honey from the bee,” could mingle in the unrestrained companionship of such friends as Scipio and Atticus and Laelius, at Caieta and Laurentum, they together strove to grow boys again in their amusements, and derived no ignoble pleasure from 02515gathering shells upon the sea-shore. Simplicity and dignity always coalesce with the utmost gentleness and good-nature, in the persons and amusements of the truly great. They are equal to the society of the most refined and erudite, in all the delicate sobriety of exalted life; and, with equal spontaneity of native greatness and acquired grace, can run, shout, and leap, with juvenile thoughts and limbs. It is not in the least surprising to find Cicero so often urging us to study the natural beauties of the country in which we live. He asserts it to be the most auspicious pleasure of youth, and the most soothing joy of serene old age. Livy and Sallust were also vividly conscious of such impressions, and of the worth they confer. Pliny the younger declared himself never to have been happier than when he was indulging himself at his country seats, where in healthful leisure he wrote his works, and celebrated the views which his villas afforded. “If life were not too short,” says Sir William Jones, “for the complete discharge of all our respective duties, public and private, and for the acquisition of necessary knowledge in any degree of perfection, with how much pleasure and improvement might a great part of it be spent, in admiring the beauties of this wonderful orb!” The graces willingly lend their zone to embellish and fortify the passions of a noble breast. Assimilating to himself the richest contributions from all sources of the beautiful, the true, and the sublime, the severest student and most useful citizen secures to himself the delightful companionship of that potent and infallible guide described by Campbell: “Taste, like the silent dial's power, Which, when supernal light is given, Can measure inspiration's hours, And tell its height in heaven!”

We have now considered two positions, assumed at the outset: 02616first, what is most abundant in nature is most ennobling in its effects; and, secondly, that the best minds are most influenced by natural excellence. It remains to indicate, thirdly, how character, as stamped on literature, has ever toned by the predominant characteristics of native scenery.

In portraying the influence which the inanimate creation exerts upon mind and letters every where, we employ what has been universally felt and acknowledged. The wise man in his lonely turret, high among the palaces of Babylon, and the unsophisticated shepherd as he watched his flocks at midnight on the plains of Chaldea, recognized in the aspects and movements of the planetary world an intimate relation to the mysterious vicissitudes of human life, and the otherwise unrevealed determinations of human destiny. In the constitution of mankind, the religious instinct and literary taste are intimately allied, and seem, indeed, to a great extent, the same. “The untutored negro, when he prostrates himself on the reedy bank of his native stream, and adores the Deity of the stream in the shape of the crocodile, or bows before the poison tree, in reverence to the God of poisons, obeys this native impulse of humanity, no less than the disciple of Zoroaster who climbs the highest mountain tops, unsoiled by the profane footsteps of trade or of curiosity, where the air is ever pure, and the sun greets the earth with its earliest light, to pay his vows and offer his incense to the visible symbols of Divinity, to his mind themselves divinities; or the outcast Guebre, who with forbidden and untold of rites, worships an ever burning flame—to him the elemental principle of nature.” The character of the early patriarchs was no doubt chiefly moulded by the peculiarity of their habitation and pursuits. Their manner of life upon the great oceans of wilderness and pasture, gave breadth and elasticity to their intellects. The free mountain winds had leave to blow against them, their eyes drank the rivers with 02717delight, and the vault of heaven under which they dwelt, with all its mighty stars, elevated their feelings no less than it expanded their minds.

The Hebrew prophets of a later day lived equally in the eye of nature. Says Gilfillan: “We always figure them with cheeks embrowned by the noons of the East. The sun had looked on them, but it was lovingly—the moon had ‘smitten’ them, but it was with poetry, not madness—they had drunk in fire, the fire of Eastern day, from a hundred sources—from the lukewarm brooks of their land, from the rich colors of their vegetation, from their mornings of unclouded brightness, from their afternoons of thunder, from the large stars of the evenings and nights. The heat of their climate was strong enough to enkindle but not to enervate their frames, inured as they were to toil, fatigue, fasting, and frequent travel. They dwelt in a land of hills and valleys, of brooks and streams, of spots of exuberant vegetation, or iron-ribbed rocks and mountains—a land, on one side, dipping down in the Mediterranean Sea, on another, floating up into Lebanon, and on the others, edged by deserts, teeming at once with dreadful scenery and secrets—through which had passed of old time the march of the Almighty, and where his anger had left for its memorials, here, the sandy sepulchre of those thousands whose carcasses fell in the wilderness, and there, a whole Dead Sea of vengeance, lowering amid a desolation fit to be the very gateway to hell:—standing between their song and subject-matter, and such a fiery clime, and such stern scenery, the Hebrew bards were enabled to indite a language more deeply dyed in the colors of the sun, more intensely metaphorical, more faithfully transcriptive of nature, a simpler, and yet larger utterance, than ever before or since rushed out from the heart and tongue of man.”

But no where do the instincts of man, in their alliance with his 02818noblest productions, appear more strongly marked by the influence of surrounding scenery, than in the early training and national literature of “pagan Greece.” That wonderful people seem fully to have understood that man was made to grow up harmoniously, with simultaneous expansion of trunk, branch, and foliage, as grows a tree; the sap of immortal energy must circulate without hindrance in every fibre, maturing fruits perennial and divine.

Two laws manifestly govern the constitution of our being, a due regard to which is indispensable to out highest welfare. In the first place, in proportion as the physical nature of man is developed by suitable discipline, winning the greatest vigor of limb, and the greatest acuteness of sense, he will derive important aids to the intellect and moral powers from the perfections of his outward frame. Moreover, by a delightful reaction, the mind, in proportion as it is invigorated and beautified, gives strength and elegance to the body, and enlarges the sphere of action and enjoyment. These laws have been observed by the best educators of the world. At Athens, the gymnasia became temples of the Graces. In these appropriate fields of moral training, the refined Greek could gratify his fondness for the beautiful, surrounded on every hand by the combined charms of nature and art. Every festival of childhood was rendered enchanting with flowers and music; the barge; as it was pushed in boyish sport on the lake, was crowned with garlands; the oars were moved to the sound of “sweet recorders,” and the patriotic mother at home sang an inspiring lullaby, as she rocked her infant to sleep in the broad shield of its robust father. There were wrestlings for all classes in the plæstra, as well as races and heroic contests for the foremost ranks; there were gay revels on the mountain-sides, and moonlight dances in the groves. The popular games described in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, and the eighth of the Odyssey, all relate to important elements in 02919national education. Those ancient festivals had the finest influence upon the inhabitants of the metropolis, and upon whose who dwelt the most remote. Every pilgrim through such lands, to such shrines, became Briareus-handed and Argus-eyed. The beautiful scenes, full of patriotic and refined associations, which very where arrested his attention, gave him the traveller's “thirsty eye,” filled his mind with thrilling reminiscences, and caused him to return to his home glowing with brilliant descriptions and burdened with exalted thoughts. It was thus that they youthful Greek mingled with his studies pedestrian exercise and acute observation, formed his body to fatigue, while he stored his mind with the choicest ideas, and became equally skilled in handling a sword, subduing a horse, or building a temple. Such was the education found in the Lyceum where Aristotle lectured, and in “The olive-grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long: There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing.”

No Grecian city was without its public squares, airy colonnades, spacious halls, and shady groves; herein the people lived, transacted their business, passed their leisure, and improved their minds. The serene heaven which that land enjoys, was the best-loved roof of its population; the grateful breeze, resounding sea, and brilliant sun, were their perpetual recreation and delight. The country was looked upon as affording the only happy home. Large towns were regarded as huge prisons, but these were made as rural as possible. Whatever splendors might gleam from the capitol, Pan and his rustic train were 03020most fascinating to the popular intellect and heart. Familiar as the sensibilities and imagination of the people were with the outward world, and connecting the changing seasons and fruits of earth with some occult power that regulated and produced them, their enthusiasm created and sustained presiding deities, propitious in the calm, and adverse in the storm. Every gushing fountain was the dwelling of a nymph; dryads shared with man the shelter and repose of groves; on each hill an oread presided benignantly over the shepherds and their flocks; while a goddess, more fruitful than “the silver-shafted queen, for ever chaste,” glided before the reapers, and shook the golden harvest from her lap on every plain. Speakers and writers the most popular, were so because they share most, and expressed most clearly, the popular feeling. Of all literatures, the Grecian is most clearly marked with a thoroughly out-of-door character. Fresh morning air breathes through and glows about its twin first-births of Poetry and Philosophy, like the clear sky which still hangs above the two lofty peaks of Parnassus. One of the most delightful treatises that antiquity has transmitted to us, is the (Economics of Xenophon, in which the pursuits and pleasures of husbandry are described in that beautiful manner which best befits the subject. And Pindar, as if expressing the universal conviction, as well as the most cherished affection of his race, has said, that “he deserves to be called the most excellent, who knows much of nature.”

Respecting the harmony of the physical temperature, landscapes, and literature of Greece, an intelligent traveller has recently testified as follows: “The beauty of the scenery, so far as my experience extends, was unsurpassed by any in the world. For no where are land and water mixed together in such just proportions; islands and bays break the monotony of the one, and relieve and repeat the beauties of the other; and no where do soft valleys fade more insensibly 03121into sublime mountains: and when one of these was crowned by forests, and the other richly cultivated and studded with gardens and habitations, it must have surpassed all other lands, and almost does so now.” It is evident that, if the climate was not so luxurious as that of Egypt, it was far more exhilarating, and instead of tending to enervate, was sufficiently severe always to invigorate, while it was at the same time so genial as to invest the general aspect of nature with the loveliest charm, and to awaken all the more delicate emotions of the human heart. We know from her admiring writers, that in that land of the cicada and the nightingale, each sound was melody, and all the hues of earth and heaven were harmonious, like the leaves of “Spring's sweetest book, the rose.” Fine thought was spontaneous and yet perfect, as the song of nature's own melodists, “singing of summer in full-throated ease;” and the softest combinations of articulate expression were but echoes of the notes which joyous zephyrs elicited along the cliffs of Parnes, or wafted from the groves of Colonus. The deification of enthusiasm, embodied in the worship of Dionysos, cannot, under such circumstances, excite surprise. Among a people so full of inspiration, adoration under some form was a grateful vent, and a primary necessity. The agrarian religion of the Pelasgic herdsmen to the last occupied the Athenian acropolis, while the later and more delicate system of Ionian mythology spread its temples over the subjacent plains. This latter is known to modern times in the literature of classical paganism. The pleasing ritual which the beech-woods of Thrace contributed to that system, in the worship of Apollo and the Muses, was a romantic element which found easy access to the Greek mind, and was welcome there. Oracular places testified that earth was the vehicle of revelations to man, whether it were by her own vaporous breath, whispering in the oak branches, the flight and voices of her creatures, or the sportive cycles into which inscribed leaves were 03222strown by the wind. Hence arose the pantheism of antiquity, which worshiped earth herself as the supreme divinity; a self-originated storehouse of all power and knowledge, in whose awful centre, over which Delphi stood, all beneficent and malignant virtues were permitted to contend and awe the world with the sublime mystery of their strife.

The Greek mythology exhibits much more appreciation of, and minuter inquisition into natural phenomena than the literature of the Romans. To the mind of the latter nation every thing was more objective; and yet the master-spirits among them were far from being indifferent to the beauties and sublimities of the material world. The fact of Catullus having a villa so far from Rome as the peninsula of Sermione, where he could look at rugged Alps, is but one of many instances we have of Romans in love with natural beauty. The best minds there, as elsewhere, knew that the true method of viewing all created things, is to unite poetry to science, and to enlist both in the pursuit of truth, in order that both may purify the heart and aggrandize the mind. Said Cicero, “There is nothing so delightful in literature as that branch which enables us to discern the immensity of nature; and which, teaching us magnanimity, rescues the soul from obscurity.” The practice of this great man comported with his theory, and substantiated it. He tells us in his letters, that when most crushed with professional cares, he would retire for weeks together from public life, and recreate himself in his quiet Cuman villa, where he enjoyed fresh breezes from the Tuscan ocean, that rolled beneath his windows, and where, thus invigorated, he wrote his famous six books upon Government. Such thinkers ever derive their finest inspiration and firmest strength from great nature, whose every kingdom they pant to explore; their imperial career is “known to every star and every wind that blows,” giving the assurance that what they say and do will 03323survive in perpetually augmented power, “when tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.” In all their purposes and pursuits, they aspire only to a place “Amid th’ august and never-dying light Of constellated spirits, who have gained A name in heaven, by power of heavenly deeds.”

No writer, among the Romans, has shown a greater relish for natural beauty, than Horace. He might well rank himself among the “lovers of the country;” not only as his works abound in its praises, but because he could prefer his Sabine retreat to a distinguished position at the court of Augustus. The odes of this accurate observer of men and things abound with exquisite pictures of rural pursuits, connected with the diversified incidents and manners of life. If he celebrates the powers of wine, the pleasure of sitting under the umbrageous foliage and luscious clusters is not forgotten. If the charms of his mistress be the theme of his song, the rose is not more beautiful, nor has the violet a perfume more sweet. When war is portrayed, he forgets not to contrast its pains and its bloody horrors with the tranquil and innocent pleasures of a smiling landscape, enlivened with the hum of rural sport and prolific cultivation. The woods and fields he loved were enjoyed as often as possible; and when confined to his couch at Rome, he still delights in the remembrance of vernal and vintage incidents, when vigorous husbandmen urge their team, and happy peasants shout the harvest-home. “Ah!” exclaims he, “how delighted I am, when wandering among steep rocks and the sombre wilderness; since the shades of forests and the murmuring of waters inspire my fancy, and will render me renowned. Sing,oh! ye virgins, the beauties of Thessalian Tempe, and the wandering isle of Delos:—celebrate, oh! 03424ye youths, the charms of that goddess, who delights in flowing rivers and the shades of trees; who lives on the mountain of Algidus, among the impenetrable woods of Erymanthus, and on the green and fertile Cragus.”

Virgil alludes less frequently to the climate and scenery of Italy, but he was thoroughly imbued with the mild splendor which adorns that beautiful clime. Though he seems always wishing for the cool valleys of Hæmus, and is most acutely appreciative of the more classical regions of Greece, he was by no means indifferent to the diversified charms of his native land. This we know from his history, can perceive it in his writings, and have felt it most when standing amid the glories that mantle his chosen grave.

The Romans, not less than the Greeks, in feeling their way through mythologic gloom, were conscious of a preternatural awe which gleamed upon them from cavernous waters and darkened from shaggy hills. “Where is a lofty and deeply-shaded grove,” writes Seneca, “filled with venerable trees, whose interlacing boughs shut out the face of heaven, the grandeur of the wood, the silence of the place, the shade so dense and uniform, infuse into the breast the notion of a divinity.” Hence the quickened imagination of the ancients, striving to supply a void which nature had created but could not fill, peopled each grove, fountain, or grotto, with a captivating train of sylvan deities. Intercourse with these, in the scenes which they sanctified, was deemed more auspicious to health and morals, than the arid and vitiating influence of crowded towns. Plutarch, for instance, after asserting that the troubled life of cities is injurious to the study of philosophy, and that solitude is the school of wisdom, proceeds to show, that the pure air of the country, and the absence of all disturbance from within, conduce most to the instruction and purification of the soul. “on this account, also,” he adds, “the temples of the 03525gods, as many as were constructed in ancient times, were always in solitary places, especially the temples of the Muses and of Pan, and of the Nymphs of Apollo, and of as many as were guides of harmony; judging, I suppose, that cities were necessarily fearful and polluted places for the education of youth.”

In contemplating the relative influence of scenery on mind, we shall probably conclude that mountains exert the greatest and most salutary power. The intellect of a people, in its primitive unfoldings amid elemental grandeurs, lies as it were in Nature's arms, feeds at her breast, looks up into her face, smiles at her smiles, shudders at her frowns, is adorned with her gracefulness, and fortified with her strength. Beauty and sublimity are thus interfused and commingled with the whole substance of the mind, as the glow of perfect health mixes itself with the whole substance of the body, unthought of, it may be, until the world is reminded of its potent fascination in deeds the mightiest and most beneficent. The mind and works of individuals tend strongly to assimilate with the nature of their parent soil. Dr. Clarke thought that the lofty genius of Alexander was nourished by the majestic presence of mount Olympus, under the shadow of which he may be said to have been born and bred. Grand natural scenery tends permanently to affect the character of those cradled in its bosom, is the nursery of patriotism the most firm and eloquence the most thrilling. Elastic as the air they breathe, free and joyous as the torrents that dash through their rural possessions, strong as the granite highlands from which they wring a hardy livelihood, the enterprising children of the hills, noble and high-minded by original endowment, are like the glorious regions of rugged adventure they love to occupy. This is an universal rule. The Foulahs dwelling on the high Alps of Africa, are as superior to the tribes living beneath, as the inhabitants of Cashmere are above the Hindoos, or as the Tyrolese are nobler 03626than the Arab race. The physical aspect and moral traits of nations are in great measure influenced by their local position, circumstances of climate, popular traditions, and the scenery in the midst of which they arise. The transition from the monotonous plains of Lombardy to the bold precipices of Switzerland is, in outward nature, exactly like that, in inward character, from the crouching and squalid appearance of the brutalized peasant, to the independent air and indomitable energy of the free-born and intelligent mountaineer. The athletic form and fearless eye of the latter bespeaks the freedom he has won to enjoy and perpetuate, the invigorating elements he buffets in hardy toil, and the daring aspirations he is fearless and fervid to indulge. Liberty has ever preferred to dwell in high places, and thence comes she down through fields and towns, revealing the glory of her countenance, and diffusing her inspiration through undaunted breasts. “Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet: Above her shook the starry lights: She heard the torrents meet. Within her palace she did rejoice, Self-gathered in her prophet-mind; But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind.”

There is in the elements of our humanity a perpetual sympathy with the accompaniments of its first development. Nearly all the heroism, moral excellence, and ennobling literature of the world, has been produced by those who, in infancy and youth, were fostered by the influence of exalted regions, where rocks and wilderness are piled in bold and inimitable shapes of savage grandeur, tinged with the hues 03727of untold centuries, and over which awe-inspiring storms often sweep with thunders in their train. This is the influence which more than half created the Shakspeares, Miltons, Wordsworths, Scotts, Coleridges, Irvings, Coopers, Bryants, and Websters of the world; and without much personal acquaintance with such scenes, it is impossible for a reader to comprehend their highest individuality of character so as fully to relish the best qualities of their works.

Nearest allied to mountains in their natural effects, is the influence of oceans on national mind. The infinite is most palpably impressed upon the boundless deep; and wherever thought is accustomed with unimpeded wing to soar from plains, or traverse opening vistas through towering hills, that it may hover over the azure waste of waters becalmed, or outspeed their foam-crested billows in wildest storms, there will literature present the brightest lineaments and possess the richest worth. The Greek was a hardy mountaineer, with the most delicate faculties of body and soul, but was not imprisoned by this mountains. Whenever he scaled a height, old Ocean, gleaming with eternal youth, wooed him to her embrace, in order to bear him to some happy island of her far-off domain. On every hand constantly appeared the two greatest stimulants on earth to emotion and thought. The voice of the Mountains, and the voice of the Sea, “each a mighty voice,” were ever rousing and guiding him; each counteracting the ultra influence of its opposite. The sea expanded the range and scope of his thoughts, which the mountain-valleys might have hurtfully restrained. For want of this salutary blending of excitement and control, it is perhaps, mainly owing that neither Tyre nor Carthage, notwithstanding their power and wealth, occupies any notable place in the intellectual history of mankind. But to the Greeks, the waste of waters was an inexhaustible mine of mental wealth. They were an amphibious race, lords of land and sea. On shore and afloat they 03828were eager listeners to the two great heralds, “Liberty's chosen music,” calling them to freedom; and nobly did they answer to the call, when the sound of the mighty Pan was ringing on their soul, at Marathon and Thermopylæ, at Salamis and Platea.

Thirlwall, and Frederic Schlegel, have both called attention to the fact, that the literature of the West is differenced from the literature of the East, by the same character which distinguishes Europe from its neighboring continents,—the great range of its coasts, compared with the extent of its surface. And Goethe suggests that “perhaps it is the sight of the sea from youth upward, that gives English and Spanish poets such an advantage over those of inland countries.” Herein the great German undoubtedly spoke from his own feelings; for he never saw the sea till he went to Italy in his thirty-eighth year; and “many-sided” as he was, he doubtless would have been a much greater and more comprehensive master had he dwelt nearer the ocean strand. Francis Horn, in his survey of German literature, alludes to this point. “Whatever is indefinite, or seems to, is out of keeping with Goethe's whose frame of mind: every thing with him is terra firma or an island: there is nothing of the infinitude of the sea. This conviction forced itself upon me, when for the first time, at the northernmost extremity of Germany, I felt the sweet thrilling produced by the highest sublimity of Nature. Here Shakspeare alone comes forward, whom one finds every where, on mountains and in valleys, in forests, by the side of rivers and a brooks. Thus far Goethe may accompany him: but in sight of the sea, Shakspeare is by himself.” Solger, also dwelling far in the interior, lamented the necessary remoteness of a power, habitual converse with which, a chance view had assured him, would produce the noblest effects. He is speaking of his first sight of the sea:—“Here, for the first time, I felt the impression of the illimitable, as produced by an object of sense, in its full majesty.”

Alfieri accustomed himself to lonely walks on the wild sea-shore near Marseilles, and those local influences gave a perpetual tone and energy to his mind. Every evening, after plunging in Neptune's domain, he would retreat to a recess where the land jutted out, and there would he sit, leaning against a high rock which concealed from his sight the land behind him, while before and around he beheld nothing but the sea and the heavens. “Blue roll'd the waters, blue the sky Spread like an ocean hung on high.”

The sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting up and embellishing these two immensities; and there he passed many an hour in auspicious rumination and mental joy. Happy are they who love the scent of wild flowers in solitary woods, and with equal gladness listen to the melody of waters as they die along the smooth beach, or crash in thunders against the craggy coast. Thrice happy are the ardent worshipers at some mountain-shrine, whence they may contemplate a scene like this under “the opening eye-lids of the morn,” or when the bold outlines of great Natures temple are thrown into fine relief against a sky crimsoned with sunset hues. The rising of day at sea, and descending day on the hills, are the most sublime and suggestive scenes man can view. The sun marries earth and ocean in harmony full of heavenly awe. This is felt at evening, when there is no filmy haze to break the softness of the west, where golden rays spread gently through the highest ether, and all is blended over the vast and glowing concave; or when in lurid splendor he glides from peak to peak, his rays flashed and reflected from cloud to cloud, as he sinks from hill to hill, presaging coming storms. Not less fascinating is the magic of light on blue unruffled waters sleeping undisturbed at early 04030dawn, or gently curling their rippling surface to catch the dancing sunbeams and reflect their mimic glories. To one standing on earth, the god of day appears with weary pace to seek repose; but at sea, he rises all fresh and glowing from his briny couch, not in softened beauty, but full of dazzling splendor, bursting at once across the threshold of the deep, with the firm and conscious step of immortal youth. Then, earth, air, and sky, are all in unison, and their calm sublime repose is rapture to the grandest souls. With Beattie's Minstrel, they are ready to exclaim, “Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votary yields! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven, Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven!”

Lakes, also, have a marked influence on mind. Switzerland has ever been a favorite resort for those who are rich in native endowment, and whose best wealth is elicited by contact with natural greatness. The most tumultuous spirits have greatest need of repose, and with keenest relish enjoy the placid and quite feelings which belong peculiarly to a lake—“as a body of still water under the influence of no current; reflecting therefore the clouds, the light, and all the imagery of the sky and surrounding hills; expressing also and making visible the changes of the atmosphere, and motions of the lightest breeze, and subject to agitation only from the winds— 04131 “The visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received Into the bosom of the steady lake!”

One cannot easily walk unmoved where water, fresh from mountain-springs, “doth make sweet music with th’ enamell'd stones,” and verdant islands float far out on a surface resembling molten silver, thus affording the most enchanting objects to the excursive view. Around this central mirror, prone to the dazzling sun, let shrubbery and trees wave to the touch of zephyrs, terraces display their tangled beauties, fields and gardens, studded with elegant villas, swell towards bleak hills, surmounted by peerless and brilliant Alps, all magnificently repeated in the limpid wave below, and you have the bright summer scene which glows from the bosom of Leman in the foreground of Mont Blanc, and renders supremely beautiful the sacred solitude so delightful at Lucerne. Watt botanized on the fragrant banks of Loch Lomond, and fortified his severer studies by the rugged majesty of the Grampians. Haller, Zimmermann, and Lavater, sunk many a sorrow in the lake around Zurich, and Gibbon wrought out his mighty task under the lofty inspiration enjoyed at Lausanne. The product and proof of this potency are signalized in the memorable passage, where he describes the close of his vast undertaking: “I have presumed to mark the moment of conception, (amid the ruins of Rome); I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect 04232of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected upon the waters, and all Nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame.”

Fountains, brooks, and rivers, impart some of the fairest aspects to the landscape, and stamp many valuable impressions on the mind. If the sea most abounds in that salt which seasons substantial and enduring thought, those steams, however small, which connect the remotest island therewith, are not entirely devoid of like power. It would seem that a sagacious love of nature was the true Egeria who taught wisdom to Numa in the grotto. When he worshiped the nymph at the fountain, and Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in the water, they appear to have made that element necessary in the loves of all minds tenderly or profoundly moved. Petrarch sung of it at the source of the Sorgue, Vaucluse, and by the rushing Rhone at Avignon. Rousseau celebrated its inspiring influence in the rural haunts he most loved; and Byron prolonged the strain over almost every renowned sea, lake, river, and fountain of the world. “Where a spring rises or a river flows,” said Seneca, “there should we build altars and offer sacrifices,”—an impulse which has been felt by the best hearts of every age. A thousand charms gather around one of those little currents of “loosened silver” that sing along the mossy channel, or leap down craggy heights, over which trees throw their protecting arms and imbibe grateful spray. How invigorating, with angle and book, or all alone with one's own thoughts, to trace the wild but gladsome offspring of the hills, now contracted by gloomy firs and half lost in dark ravines,—now sparkling from the deepest shadow, broken into dimples and bounding to the sun,—anon sweeping wild flowers to its bosom, and with augmented wave washing the gnarlend and spreading 04333roots which jut out here and there from impending banks, with fringes of dripping weeds,—and finally losing its tributary beauty in a mightier stream. “Laugh of the Mountain,” is the title given to a brook by a Spanish poet; and Bryant is not less happy in characterizing this fair feature of the world. “The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being.”

The chief rivers of every clime have ever furnished the favorite themes of leading minds. Darius was so charmed with the river Tearus, that he commemorated his attachment by erecting a votive column on its brink. Where rolled Ilyssus, was the best school of Athens; and on the shores of Arno and Cam, Milton acquired his best training and enjoyed the happiest life; as did Thompson, thrilled with the murmurs of the Jed. The philosophers of Shiraz composed their most celebrated works near the shores of the Rochnabad; while by the sacred Ganges, near Benares, erudite teachers instruct their pupils, after the manner of Plato, walking in their gardens. Aufidus, the Tiber, and the Po, had their respective admirers in Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, and the reader need not be told that all tongues unite to celebrate the Rhine. Calimachus has immortalized the beautiful waters of the Inachus, while the Mincio and the Tagus boast their Boccacio and Camöens; and the lovers of English letters know full well that the Severn, Trent, Avon, Derwent, Dee, and Thames, have been distinguished by the praises of the mightiest pens.

Modern literature, the production of northern regions, is imbued with a wild and romantic element strongly distinguished from the 04434severe simplicity of the classic south. This contrast has its counterpart, and much of its producing cause, in the characteristic scenery of its origin. In old Greece, the lovely climate had just vicissitudes enough to impress a happy variety on the experience and coinage of mind; while their free institutions, and the deep wisdom of their philosophers, conduced towards the production of those imperishable monuments of grandeur and beauty before which the genius of humanity still reverently bends. But England, and the kindred regions of Germany, have in their less favored climates a depth of gloom which is known to characterize the northern spirit, in which external nature is admirably harmonious with the intellectual structure, by its influence thereupon eliciting the noblest efforts. The literature of a country is truly national, just so far as it bears upon it the stamp of national character. Among the external causes which tend to create this exalted type of individuality, natural scenery and climate are undoubtedly the most obvious. The features of their native landscape give form and color to the thoughts and words of all creative minds. For instance, through the living speech, and over the speaking page of the Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-American race, one can easily recognize the daily vicissitudes and fluctuating seasons,—those tints and hues of vernal beauty, summer promise, autumnal wealth, and wintry desolation,—those dimly shrouding mists which alternate with brilliant light,—and which render objects more lovely and harmonious to those who realize the invisible and perceive the spiritual, who unite all worlds in the comprehensive grasp of their imagination, and thus substantiate in effective use that which to others is only shadowy and remote.

As is the scenery, so are national letters and works of art. We children of mists, clouds, woods, darkening tempests, and weeping rain, produce and prefer the beauty of mystery and indefiniteness, in 04535other words, romantic beauty. If we would cultivate a keen pleasure in definite beauty, as it is seen in Homeric literature, and as it stood mightily exemplified in the severely gorgeous splendor of the Acropolis, we must transport our mind at least, if not our person, to other climes. There we may best emulate the consummate excellence which results from the coalescence of alacrity with depth, and which was most happily impressed upon the language Plato spoke, and in the symmetry which still survives in the fragmentary Propylæa and Olympeion. But if we would behold at once combined the definite beauty, shapely vastness, instantaneously recognized unity, and cheerful grandeur, most characteristic of the scenery, literature, and art of an immortal land, let us for a moment glance at the magnificent panorama, as seen from the lofty terrace through the golden-hued colonnades of the Parthenon. Linger here a while till the eye becomes accustomed to the scene, and imagination is able to refit the mutilated forms, and you will easily understand the spirit of the old religion, and its consecrated works. “There is no mixture of light and shade, no half-concealing, half-revealing, as in the symbolical cathedrals of the Christian faith. There are no rays of divine darkness running alongside of the rays of light, and sinking into the ground beneath the altar of the East. All is open to the unbounded blue ether above and the vertical rays of noonday sun, and the trembling visitations of the unimpeded moonbeams, a very house of light, unstained by painted glass, undarkened by vaulted roofs, unintercepted by columns and arcades, and with the instantaneous perception of unity unmarred by the cruciform shape.” Who can never forget the electrical effect produced when first beholding the blue sky between the columns of a classic ruin? The shape, the tallness, which makes the space seem narrow, the straight hard line which renders the perfect contour so definite, all startle the eye with its firm and stable symmetry, even 04636after one has been long accustomed to the reverently swerving lines of a cathedral, and to the bold and trustful curve of the Gothic arch, throwing itself from pillar, with its segmental circle, like the unfolding of Christian truth here below, whose perfect whole is in heaven.

The mental creations of central Europe, and the still more romantic regions of the north, are equally characterized by an indefiniteness exactly comporting with the aspects and temperature of the material kingdoms around. The human soul, thirsting after immensity, immutability, and unbounded duration, needs some tangible object from which to take its flight,—some point whence to soar from the present into the future, from the limited to the infinite,—and is likely to be most vigorous in its capacity and productions where such facilities most abound. Mere space, contemplated under the dome of heaven, prostrates, rather than sustains, the mind; but Alpine heights, seen at a glance where earth and sky mingle, constitute the quickening and fortifying regions where mundane understanding and celestial imagination most happily blend in the suggestion of thoughts such as common language never expressed. Deep caverns, contracted lakes, projecting crags, impending avalanches, and glittering pinnacles, which rise in serene majesty till they are lost in mist and cloud, rolling over their summits like the waves of ocean, realize prospects which seem to conduct the contemplator from this to another world. The magnificence thus poured on the mind naturally imbues its faculties, and will be reproduced in living speech, or for ever glow from a graphic pen. The solitude seems holy where every grand feature constitutes a hymn, and a sublime melancholy impresses itself upon the thoughtful soul.

Northern legends and apparitions partake much more of the spiritual and infinite than did the sylvan deities and semi-human 04737mythology of the classic South; and modern romance, with its prevailing gloom and indefinite character, is much more appalling than the sunny and social personifications which antiquity produced. The natural phenomena which abound in a wild, uncultivated country, powerfully conspire to create the illusions of fancy which so much modify reason's severest works. The preternatural appearance commonly said to occur in the German mountains and Scottish highlands, whose lofty summits and unreclaimed valleys are shrouded with tempestuous clouds, may be explained on the same philosophical principle, whence the most potent local inspiration is derived. That which is strongly felt, is not only easily seen, but as easily believed; and an appetite for the marvellous, constantly excited, is made keen to detect and multiply visions and prognostics, until each heath or glen has its unearthly visitants, each family its omen, each hut its boding spectre, and superstition, systematized into a science, is expounded by wizards and gifted seers. The character of a primitive mythology, mingling more or less with the best literature of a nation, is always intimately connected with that of the scenery and climate in which it arose. Thus the graceful Nymphs and Naiads of Greece; the Peris of Persia, gay as the colors of the rainbow, and odorous as flowers; the Fairies of England, who in airy circles “dance their ringlets to the whistling wind,” have forms and functions delicate and beautiful, like the countries in which they dwell; while “the Elves, Bogles, Brownies, and Kelpies, which seem to have legitimately descended, in ancient Highland verse, from the Scandinavian Dvergar, Nisser, &c., are of a stunted and malignant aspect, and are celebrated for nothing better than maiming cattle, bewildering the benighted traveller, and conjuring out the souls of newborn infants.”

It is an occasion for special gratitude to God that there are yet wild spots and wildernesses left, unstained fountains and virgin hills, 04838where avarice has little dominion, and whence thought may take the widest range. These exercise analogous power over the popular mind, furnish the purest stimulus to noble exertion, and have ever developed the strongest patriotism, intensest energy, and most valuable letters of the world. So far as we can derive capacities from inanimate things, and be impelled by the activities which depend on place, mountains, moors, forests and rocky shores, are the localities most favorable for vigorous and prolific life. The language we speak, and the glorious literature it has preserved, are the accumulated products and historical proof of this. When the Saxons were called in as friends and allies by the Romanized Britons, they assembled in great numbers with their king Hengist, during the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era, and England continued to be peopled by them. But instead of friends they soon became masters, and the ancient inhabitants, the Britons, disappeared; after which, the Saxon tongue, laws, government, and manners soon overspread the land; so that it may literally be said, “the British constitution came out of the woods of Germany.”

The real and ideal are most closely allied in the grandest creations of nature and the finest conceptions of mind. Although hoary cliffs and soaring heights are among the most palpable facts of earth, it is on them that we always seem to be most in the domain of fancy. It is impossible to overstate our indebtedness to those gigantic disturbances of the solid globe, by which mountains, with all their accompaniments of wild and rugged features, were upheaved, and substituted, in bold and picturesque beauty, for dead level plains. Without this contrast of expressive objects, earth would have told out little of those sublime truths, of which now every hill is a prophet, every stone a book. The ancients frequently erected temples and statues to the genius of the place; and these were often in retired localities, like Iero, the sacred city of Æsculapius, occupying a mountain-hollow, the 04939most secluded in Greece. According to Pliny, his countrymen, too, felt that Minerva, as well as Diana, inhabits the forests. Among the woods of Etruria, the great lawgiver and ruler to whom Rome was under greater obligations than to Romulus, sought refuge from the cares that attended the government of a turbulent but growing nation, and was the first pagan sovereign ever inspired to erect a fane to Peace and Faith. Akenside finely alludes to the sacred awe, with which the wilderness and hidden dells, stretching along the acclivities of a high mountain, are contemplated by person of refined imagination: “Mark the sable woods, That shade sublime you mountain's nodding brow. With what religious awe the solemn scene Commands your steps! as if the reverend form Of Minos, or of Numa, should forsake Th’ Elysian seats; and down the embowering glade Move to your pausing eye.”

When we meditate in plains, the globe appears youthful and imbecile; among crags and mountains, it exhibits energy and the gravity of age. All primitive aspects indicate a deep solemnity, and generate invincible power. We feel the spirit of the universe upon us, and are not surprised that when the shepherd in Virgil sought Love, he found him a native of the rocks. Traces of the divinity most abound in localities apart from throngs of mankind, where one can best establish the equilibrium of the soul by that of solitude, feeling a life on the surface of things and eternity in their depths. Nature sheds much of a supernatural influence around the superior souls, constituted in harmony with herself. Physical elements become plastic in the hands of such, and receive an impression not less brilliant than 05040enduring. Their mind is made to act as a prism, under whose influence the simplest elements assume the most exquisite combination of hues; and thus inanimate kingdoms and artificial lessons are converted into golden visions of thought and feeling. Form, color, light and shade are attendant handmaids, ever ready to impart a graceful and perennial utterance to the sublimest conceptions, and adorn rugged strength with charms more real and captivating than that of words.

This is as often verified in art as in literature. Hogarth began life a silver-engraver, Chantry a wood-carver, and Raeburn a goldsmith; but ruled by the love fed in early intercourse with nature, their course was changed, and each was matured in his peculiar department of excellence. Romney, when but a child, studied coloring before the rainbow, the purple perspective and gleaming lake; he took his first lessons in composition through wild woods, fruitful valleys, and over the loftiest mountains within reach. Mortimer with strongest impulse studied the sea, chafed and foaming, fit “to swallow navigation up,” with ships driven before tempests, or strown in ruin. These, passionately seen and felt, gave him a skillful artistic hand. Richard Cosway was first kindled with a love for painting by a chance glance at two picturesque works from Rubens, at Tiverton; and a beautiful piece of wood is still shown in Suffolk, where the ancient trees, winding glades, and sunny nooks inspired Gainsborough with the love of art. Thence he emerged the first landscape painter of his age. A few prints, illustrative of Michael Angelo's genius, found in his father's library, and conned beneath gnarled oaks, made the enthusiastic Fusili a master in his way; and a perusal of “The Jesuit's Perspective” when only eight years old, led an observant youth into the open fields, and prepared the way for Sir Joshua Reynolds to become the highest model and most elegant teacher of British art. It is well known that Salvator Rosa once resided with a band of robbers, and that the impressions 05141received from the rocks, caves, dens, and mountains they inhabited, gave a decided tone and direction to his taste. His original bent was thus so strongly developed, that he loved rather to stand on the ruins of nature, than to admire her soft and beautiful combinations; hence his imagination became daring and impetuous, his pencil rugged and sublime, from prolific sources armed to throw a savage grandeur over all his works. Claude Lorrain, on the contrary, spent his happiest days in sunny scenes, where the earth was enamelled with flowers, and heaven's mild radiance beamed perpetually on his brow. He early learned to mix a pallet of colors from every realm of beauty, and all his pictures teem with loveliness and peace.

In a fine picture, as in a favorite book, it is easy to identify what we behold with the life of the author; and probably we shall trace his first impressions in the peculiarity of his style, as well as in the general tenor of his thoughts. Milton found his most genial inspiration amidst the embowered lawns of Vallombrosa; Gray was permanently benefited by the solitude of the Chartreuse; and Johnson never rose higher in refined sentiment, than on the sea-beaten rock of Iona. To the great bard of Paradise Lost, nature ever imparted a clear and steady light, shining brightly through the storms of tumultuous life, and kindling up, when all else was dark, a lustre worthy of Eden in its first bloom. Shakspeare possessed the most intense fondness for natural beauty, and displayed it in all his works. “Images of rural scenes are for ever floating on his mind, and there is scarce an object, from the lofty mountain to the sequestered valley, from the dark tempest to the gray dawn and placid moonlight, from dreary winter to warm and fragrant spring, that he has not depicted; gentle airs, and murmuring rills, and sequestered groves, are features as prominent in his dramas, as the beings that haunt them; the vows of love become indeed silver soft as they are whispered by night 05242among pomegranate groves; life is more sweet among trees, and stones, and running brooks, afar from public haunts; the gentle boy sleeps more fitly among embowering woods, watched by fairy forms, and sung to rest by the dirge of affection.” Like Milton, Shakspeare seems to have dwelt with sincerest pleasure on the peaceful images of rural life, and no one familiar with his history and thoughts can be surprised that, as soon as he was enabled to escape from the artificialness of metropolitan life, he hastened to spend the evening of his existence among the quiet hills and vales where in careless youth he had wandered, gathering innumerable germs of the richest and most magnificent thoughts. Sir Walter Scott's great art lay in exact descriptions of nature and of character, a facility attained by the constant pursuit of some piece of striking scenery, or in watching the spontaneous exhibition of unsophisticated character. Fancy was resorted to only for filling up the interstices, or supplying vacancies in the originals which nature furnished. In youth, he read Hool's Tasso and Percy's Reliques of ancient poetry, and beneath a huge platanus tree, within the ruins of an old arbor near Kelso, the most beautiful and romantic village in Scotland. In full view lay the Tweed and the Teviot, both famous rivers, the ancient castles of Roxburgh and a ruined abbey, with the modern mansion of Fleurs, a landscape so situated as to combine the ideas of ancient baronial splendor with those of modern taste. These were vividly associated with the grand features of the scene around the young observer; and the historical incidents, or traditional legends connected with them, gave them to his impassioned soul an intense reverence for ancient ruins and chivalrous enterprise. Thenceforth his faculties were all awake, and fitted for their work; giving to every field its battle, and to every rivulet its song. A true man's productions everywhere are the types of his mind, and reveal the scenes and circumstances of his early training. 05343Edmund Burke grew up encompassed by the gorgeous scenery around the castle of Kilcolman; and his great living successor in Parliament, Sheil, * gathered the best energies of his eloquence near the fine woods of Faithley, and the noble seat of the Bolton family, when the sullen roar of the ocean used to come over the hills to greet his youth, under the shadow of Dunbrody Abbey in ruins, where the Nore and the Barrow met in a deep and splendid conflux with his native Suir. The minds of these great men were the transcripts of the scenes they loved; and it is most pertinent to this theme to remind the reader that one, perhaps greater than they, the master statesman and orator of his age, was cradled in the rugged bosom of Alpine New Hampshire, where all is cool, colossal, sublime.

On a flowery morning of spring, or in the stillness of a clear autumnal night—in summer fruitfulness or wintry desolation,—we feel, if we do not hear, the rushing of that stream of life, which from Orion flows down to the every heart of earth. Hence the declaration of Burns,—” There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more—I do not know how I should call it pleasure —but something which exalts me—something enraptures me—than to walk in the sheltered side of the wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter-day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and roaring over the plain. It is my best season for devotion.” Campbell, too, courted the heath-clad wilderness—” bleak—lifeless—and broken into numberless glens—strewn with rocks—and scantily clothed with copse-wood; from the dusky covert of which he could observe the wild deer darting forth at intervals and again vanishing in a deeper and more distant shade. Bold rocks, fringed with flowers, rising in huge and often grotesque masses through the purple health; streams and torrents 05444winding peacefully through the deep grassy glens, or dashing, in clouds of spray, over some rugged precipice; the shrill pipe of the curlew— the blithe carol of the lark over head—the bleating of the goats from the steep pastoral acclivities—the scream of the eagle from his eyrie in the rocks:”—these were the sights and sounds which enlivened his rambles and supplied his worth. The youth of Byron was spent mainly on the sea-shore, the heaths, and the hills, of the Doric north; and when more secluded in Newstead Abbey, the recollections of childhood moulded his first song. “When I roved, a young highlander, o'er the dark heath. And climb'd thy steep summit, O Morven! of snow; To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath, Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below.”

Gladsome wanderings in the sunshine among the hills, enlivened by melodious water and the song of birds, the changeful aspects of fields and woods, gleamings of the far-off sea, and mountains piercing through clouds a pathway to the skies—this is the paradise of all minds nobly endowed, and not yet entirely debased. It is when thus environed and exercised that lofty impulses are kindled in genial blood. Thus was felt and expressed the grandeur, beauty, pathos, dazzling light and freezing gloom which mingled in the memories of Childe Harold. He had profoundly experienced the truth that, “To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not solitude; ‘tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.”

We have purposely avoided copious reference to American scenery, artists and authors, as corroborative of the positions assumed in the foregoing disquisition. We know something of the pictorial illustrations so admirably executed for this work, and would gladly allude to the diversified aspects characteristic of art, literature, and scenery in our land. But that department has been assigned to other and abler pens. Our specific task will conclude with a remark or two on the relation which nature sustains to religion, as an auxiliary in the highest culture of mind.

What scene is more simple, or more sublime, than the vast solitude of untainted nature, cast in a fresh yet giant mould, a silent and mighty temple of the great God, wherein the pure spirit of love reign and smiles over all? Pilgrimages were made to the oaks of Mamre, near Hebron, from the time of Abraham to that of Constantine; and the nations surrounding the divinely favored tribes conspired to attach the idea of veneration to rivers and fountains, and were accustomed not only to dedicate trees and groves to their deities, but ever to sacrifice on high mountains: customs which were practised by the Jews themselves, previous to the building of Solomon's temple. The beginning of wisdom was among the wilds of Asia, and it was there that the God of nature implanted grand ideas in the minds of shepherds meditating on those antique plains and heights, teaching them to wonder and adore. As the loftiest mountains are surmounted with unsullied snow, so the purest sentiments crowned their exalted souls, and for ever rendered them the chief source of fertilizing streams to all lands, through every region of thought.

A little child standing under the heaven bright with stars, once asked its mother,—“Dear mother, are those yonder the open places, which the glory of God shines through?” Those were the old heavens which infancy admired, and they yet proclaim the glory of their 05646Maker to the most matured. The hills, the values, and the ocean, have never grown old, but still have wonders as innumerable as they are lasting. Not a realm of nature is unfolded to our gaze that does not teem with beauties and sublimities bearing an antiquity more ancient than the pyramids. The evening breeze is yet redolent of the balm shed over Canaan, when Isaac went forth to meditate. Zion's hill has survived its temple, and lifts its sacred brow to the same sun that shone upon Thermopylæ, and is swept by the same wind which laid the armaments of Xerxes low. The rainbow we to-day admire, is the same that was bent near the portal of the Ark; and the mighty rivers of America bear with their billows a murmur kindred to the Nile, as it moved the bulrushes of Egypt in which the child Moses nestled, watched over by the sisterly love of Miriam.

To holy men of the earlier times, the exterior and interior life were brought into perfect harmony, so as to produce the expansion of heart which is the real cause that makes rural existence so delightful to men of good will: for so sweet is it to them, that “they whose verse of yore the golden age recorded, and its bliss on the Parnassian mountain,” seem to have foreseen it in Arcadian dreams. They loved clear waters, aspiring hills, with all the countless forms and tones which each returning spring reproduced more fair than ever to their growing appreciation. Nature prompted purifying tears in their eyes, that they might trace the goodness of their God in these his lower works, wondering not that the Samaritan woman should have recognized and confessed the Messiah at the fountain, whom Jewish sages knew not in the temple. The fields and level shores were by them connected with religious mysteries; for, Jesus standing by the lake of Genesareth when the multitude pressed upon him, the two boats afloat and the occupation of the fishermen, together with the walk through the corn with the disciples on the Sabbath, were designed to make such an 05747impression, that one should never enjoy the beauties of nature, or the recreations of a country life, without being reminded of the blessed Redeemer. But mountains are especially associated with religion through the remembrance of that mount whose name has given a universal fame to the pale verdure of the olive, from that of Tabor, and Sinai, and Ephraim, which fed the holy Samuel. We read in the Iliad that Hector sacrificed on the top of Ida; and the summits of mountains were ever selected, not only by the Greeks, but by nations taught direct from heaven, as the most appropriate situations whereon their altars should stand. It was on mountains that the only true God manifested himself to the Hebrews of old, and it was on them that the tremendous mysteries of redemption were accomplished. Connected with these grand objects, and in no small measure by them inspired, was the mighty energy which sent the apostle Paul to Mars Hill, preaching Jesus and the resurrection; and long afterwards, in a feebler degree, impelled Edward Irving to roll “the rich thunders of his awful voice,” where mute thousands stood enraptured amid the glories of the Frith of Forth.

Persons accustomed to explore the ruins of religious houses in England, and the scenery peculiar to each, will often be struck with the fact that the several orders consulted their highest happiness, as well as greatest good, in fixing the site of their respective foundations. Evidently, mere convenience, or retirement, was not their chief aim; they felt the spiritual culture would be most auspicious, where natural charms most abound. They believed that in the shrines which Jehovah had adorned with the clearest impress of his own attributes, and in which he had bidden nature contribute her richest gifts,—the glittering gems of her mineral stores, the fairest folds of her tinted drapery, the delicate tracery of her interlacing boughs, the incense of her breathing flowers, the music of her gentlest zephyrs, her sighing 05848foliage, chanting birds, and gliding waters,—they also could most suitable offer adoration. Quiet nooks, shut in by the curving river, as Kirkstall; rocky banks, encompassed with verdant foliage, as Fountains; umbrageous and sequestered sea-coasts, as Netley; green plots of smooth sward, traversed by some wild, romantic stream, as Tintern; cool and solitary valleys, as Furness; lovely shores, where the swift brook sparkles and bounds to the deep, as Beaulieu;—such were the homes the early Christians loved. And they had their reward. Their persons, their names, and the distinguishing features of their creeds, true and false, have mainly passed away, but the scenes of their earthly devotions are treasured by all the good. Still we visit their ruins, to mourn over their departed glories; “and still they live in fame, though not in life.” We may not adopt the theology of those devout builders, but it would be well for us to emulate their taste, knowing that while all sublunary thing are transient, “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever!”

The enthusiastic painter, Gainsborough, exclaimed on his deathbed,—“We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke will be of the party.” May the reader be imbued with something more divine than mere taste, that he may survive anguish or ecstasy in the energies of faith; and, soaring amid the infinite glories of the universe, at each remove imbibing majestic charms of every hue and form, may he for ever realize the high significancy of our theme,— Scenery and Mind.

The village of Rondout, founded in 1808, by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, is situated near the Walkill Creek on the Hudson, about ninety miles above the city of New-York, and two miles distant from Eddyville, where that Canal terminates.

In the effective and mellow little picture from which our engraving is taken, Mr. Huntington has pleasingly represented a secluded and romantic nook on the creek, near its entrance to the Hudson. In the background is a glimpse of the Catskill mountains. The picture is one of the pair belonging to Gen. John A. Dix, and is one of the happiest efforts of the artist in this department, especially in its coloring.

Every intellectual being has a longing to see distant lands. We desire to ascertain, by actual observation, the peculiarities of nations, the differences which exist between the stranger and ourselves, and as it might be all that lies beyond our daily experience. This feeling seems implanted in our nature, and few who possess the means of doing so fail to gratify it. Every day increases the amount of the intercourse between the people of different countries, and the happiest results may be anticipated from this fusion of nations and the humanizing influences which are its consequences. Those, however, who are forbidden by circumstances to extend their personal observations beyond the limits of their own homes, must be content to derive their information on such subjects from the pen, the pencil, and the graver.

We understand it to be the design of this work to aid in imparting a portion of the intelligence, necessary to appease these cravings of our nature, and to equalize, as it might, be the knowledge of men and things. Our own task is very simple. It will be confined to 06252showing some of the leading peculiarities of the scenery of various nations, and to direct the attention of the reader to the minor circumstances which give character to the landscape, but which are seldom alluded to by the writers of graver works.

The great distinction between American and European scenery, as a whole, is to be found in the greater want of finish in the former than in the latter, and to the greater superfluity of works of art in the old world than in the new. Nature has certainly made some differences, though there are large portions of continental Europe that, without their artificial accessories, might well pass for districts in our own region; and which forcibly remind the traveller of his native home. As a whole, it must be admitted that Europe offers to the senses sublimer views and certainly grander, than are to be found within our own borders, unless we resort to the Rocky Mountains, and the ranges in California and New Mexico.

In musing on these subjects, the mind of the untravelled American naturally turns first towards England. He has pictured to himself landscapes and scenery on which are impressed the teeming history of the past. We shall endeavor to point out the leading distinctions between the scenery of England and that of America, therefore, as the course that will probably be most acceptable to the reader.

The prevalent characteristic of the English landscape is its air of snugness and comfort. In these respects it differs entirely from its neighbor, France. The English, no doubt, have a great deal of poverty and squalid misery among them. But it is kept surprisingly out of the ordinary view. Most of it, indeed, is to be found in the towns, and even in them it is concealed in out of the way places and streets seldom entered by the stranger.

There are places in America, more especially in the vicinities of the large towns, that have a strong resemblance to the more crowded 06353portions of England, though the hedge is usually wanting and the stone wall is more in favor among ourselves than it appears ever to have been among our ancestors. The great abundance of wood, in this country, too, gives us the rail and the board for our fences, objects which the lovers of the picturesque would gladly see supplanted by the brier and the thorn. All that part of Staten Island, which lies nearest to the quarantine ground, has a marked resemblance to what we should term suburban English landscape. The neighborhoods of most of the old towns in the northern States, have more of less of the same character; it being natural that the descendants of Englishmen should have preserved as many of the usages of their forefathers as was practicable. We know of no portion of this country that bears any marked resemblance to the prevalent characteristics of an ordinary French landscape. In France there are two great distinctive features that seem to divide the materials of the views between them. One is that of a bald nakedness of formal grandes routes , systematically lined with trees, a total absence of farm-houses, fences, hedges, and walls, little or no forest, except in particular places, scarcely any pieces of detached woods, and a husbandry that is remarkable for its stiffness and formality. The fields of a French acclivity, when the grain is ripe, or ripening, have a strong resemblance to an ordinary Manchester pattern-card, in which the different cloths, varying in color, are placed under the eye at one glance. The effect of this is not pleasing. The lines being straight and the fields exhibiting none of the freedom of nature. Stiffness and formality, indeed, impair the beauty of nine-tenths of the French landscapes; though as a whole the country is considered fine, and is certainly very productive. The other distinctive feature to which we allude is of a directly contrary character, being remarkable for the affluence of its objects. It often occurs in that country that the traveller finds himself on a height that commands 06454a view of great extent, which is literally covered with bourgs or small towns and villages. This occurs particularly in Normandy, in the vicinity of Paris, and as one approaches the Loire. In such places it is no unusual thing for the eye to embrace, as it might be in a single view some forty or fifty cold, grave-looking, chiselled bourgs and villages, almost invariably erected in stone. The effect is not unpleasant, for the subdued color of the buildings has a tendency to soften the landscape and to render the whole solemn and imposing. We can recall many of these scenes that have left indelible impressions on the mind, and which, if not positively beautiful in a rural sense, are very remarkable. That from the heights of Montmorenci, near Paris, is one of them; and there is another, from the hill of St. Catherine, near Rouen, that is quite as extraordinary.

The greater natural freedom that exist in an ordinary American landscape, and the abundance of detached fragments of wood, often render the views of this country strikingly beautiful when they are of sufficient extent to conceal the want of finish in the details, which require time and long-continued labor to accomplish. In this particular we conceive that the older portions of the United States offer to the eye a general outline of view that may well claim to be even of a higher cast, than most of the scenery of the old world.

There is one great charm, however, that it must be confessed is nearly wanting among us. We allude to the coast. Our own is, with scarcely an exception, low, monotonous and tame. It wants Alpine rocks, bold promontories, visible heights inland, and all those other glorious accessories of the sort that render the coast of the Mediterranean the wonder of the world. It is usual for the American to dilate on the size of his bays and rivers, but objects like these require corresponding elevation in the land. Admirable as is the bay of New-York for the purposes of commerce, it holds but a very subordinate 06555place as a landscape among the other havens of the world. The comparison with Naples that has so often been made, is singularly unjust, there not being two bays of any extent to be found, that are really less alike than these. It was never our good fortune to see Constantinople or Rio de Janeiro, the two noblest and most remarkable scenes of this kind, as we have understood, known to the traveller. But we much question if either will endure the test of rigid and severe examination better than the celebrated Gulf of Napoli. The color of the water, alone, is a peculiar beauty of all the Mediterranean bays: it is the blue of the deep sea, carried home to the very rocks of the coast. In this respect, the shores of America, also, have less claim to beauty than those of Europe, generally. The waters are green, the certain sign of their being shallow. Similar tints prevail in the narrow seas between Holland and England. The name of Holland recalls a land, however, that is even lower than any portion of our own with which we are acquainted. There are large districts in Holland that are actually below the level of the high tides of the sea. This country is a proof how much time, civilization, and persevering industry, may add even to the interest of a landscape. While the tameness of the American coast has so little to relieve it or to give it character, in Holland it becomes the source of wonder and admiration. The sight of vast meadows, villages, farm-houses, churches, and other works of art, actually lying below the level of the adjacent canals, and the neighboring seas, wakes in the mind a species of reverence for human industry. This feeling becomes blended with the views, and it is scarcely possible to gaze upon a Dutch landscape without seeing, at the same time, ample pages from the history of the country and the character of its people. On this side of the ocean, there are no such peculiarities. Time, numbers, and labor are yet wanting to supply the defects of nature, and we must be content, for a while, 06656with the less teeming pictures drawn in our youth and comparative simplicity.

On the American coast the prevailing character is less marked at the northward and eastward than at the southward. At some future day, the Everglades of Florida may have a certain resemblance to Holland. They are the lowest land, we believe, in any part of this country

Taking into the account the climate and its production, the adjacent mountains, the most picturesque outlines of the lakes, and the works of art which embellish the whole, we think that most lovers of natural scenery would prefer that around the lakes of Como and Maggiore to that of any other place familiarly known to the traveller. Como is ordinarily conceived to carry off the palm in Europe, and it is not probable that the great mountains of the East or any part of the Andes, can assemble as many objects of grandeur, sweetness, magnificence and art, as are to be found in this region. Of course, our own country has nothing to the sort to compare with it. The Rocky Mountains, and the other great ranges in the recent accession of territory, must possess many noble views, especially as one proceeds south; but the accessories are necessarily wanting, for a union of art and nature can alone render scenery perfect.

In the way of the wild, the terrific, and the grand, nature is sufficient of herself; but Niagara is scarcely more imposing than she is now rendered lovely by the works of man. It is true that this celebrated cataract has a marked sweetness of expression, if we may use such a term, that singularly softens its magnificence, and now that men are becoming more familiar with its mysteries, and penetrating into its very mists, by means of a small steamboat,—the admirer of nature discovers a character different from that which first strikes the senses.

We regard it as hypercritical to speak of the want of Alpine scenery 06757around Niagara. On what scale must the mountains be moulded to bear a just comparison, in this view of the matter, with the grandeur of the cataract! The Alps, the Andes, and the Himmalaya, would scarcely suffice to furnish materials necessary to produce the contrast, on any measurement now known to the world. In fact the accessories, except as they are blended with the Falls themselves, as in the wonderful gorge through which the river rushes in an almost fathomless torrent, as if frightened at its own terrific leap; the Whirlpool, and all that properly belongs to the stream, from the commencement of the Rapids, or, to be more exact, from the placid, lake-like scenery above these Rapids, down to the point where the waters of this mighty strait are poured into the bosom of the Ontario, strike us as being in singular harmony with the views of the Cataract itself.

The Americans may well boast of their water-falls, and of their lakes, notwithstanding the admitted superiority of upper Italy and Switzerland in connection with the highest classes of the latter. They form objects of interest over a vast surface of territory, and greatly relieve the monotony of the inland views. We do not now allude to the five great lakes, which resemble seas and offer very much the same assemblage of objects to the eye; but to those of greatly inferior extent, that are sparkling over so much of the surface of the northern States. The east, and New-York in particular, abound in them, though farther west the lover of the picturesque must be content to receive the prairie in their stead. It would be a great mistake, however, to attempt to compare any of these lakes with the finest of the old world; though many of them are very lovely and all contribute to embellish the scenery. Lake George itself could not occupy more than a fourth or fifth position in a justly graduated scale of the lakes of Christendom; though certainly very charming to the eye, and of singular variety in its aspects. In one particular, indeed, this lake has scarcely an equal. 06858We allude to its islands, which are said to equal the number of the days in the year. Points, promontories, and headlands are scarcely ever substitutes for islands, which add inexpressibly to the effect of all water-views.

It has been a question among the admirers of natural scenery, whether the presence or absence of detached farm-houses, of trees, of hedges, walls and fences, most contribute to the effect of any inland view. As these are the great points of distinction between the continent of Europe and our own country, we shall pause a moment to examine the subject a little more in detail. When the towns and villages are sufficiently numerous to catch the attention of the eye, and there are occasional fragments of forest in sight, one does not so much miss the absence of that appearance of comfort and animated beauty that the other style of embellishment so eminently possesses. A great deal, however, depends, as respects these particulars, on the nature of the architecture and the color of the buildings and fences. It is only in very particular places and under very dull lights, that a the contrast between white and green is agreeable. A fence that looks as if it were covered with clothes hung out to dry, does very little towards aiding the picturesque. And he who endeavors to improve his taste in these particulars, will not fail to discover in time that range of country which gives up its objects, chiselled and distinct, but sober, and sometimes sombre, will eventually take stronger hold of his fancy than one that is glittering with the fruits of the paint and white-wash brushes. We are never dissatisfied with the natural tints of stone, for the mind readily submits to the ordering of nature; and though one color may be preferred to another, each and all are acceptable in their proper places. Thus, a marble structure is expected to be white, and as such, if the building be of suitable dimensions and proportions, escapes our criticisms, on account of its richness and uses. 06959The same may be said of other hues, when not artificial; but we think that most admirers of nature, as they come to cultivate their tastes, settle down into a preference for the gray and subdued over all the brighter tints that art can produce. In this particular, then, we give the preference to the effects of European scenery, over that of this country, where wood is so much used for the purposes of building, and where the fashion has long been to color it with white. A better taste, however, or what we esteem as such, is beginning to prevail, and houses in towns and villages are now not unfrequently even painted in subdued colors. We regard the effect as an improvement, though to our taste no hue, in its artificial objects, so embellishes a landscape as the solemn color of the more sober, and less meretricious looking stones.

We believe that a structure of white, with green blinds, is almost peculiar to this country. In the most propitious situations, and under the happiest circumstances, the colors are unquestionably unsuited to architecture, which, like statuary, should have but one tint. If, however, it be deemed essential to the flaunting tastes of the mistress of some mansion, to cause the hues of the edifice in which she resides to be as gay as her toilette, we earnestly protest against the bright green that is occasionally introduced for such purposes. There is a graver tint, of the same color, that entirely changes the expression of a dwelling. Place two of these houses in close proximity, and scarcely an intellectual being would pass them, without saying that the owner of the one was much superior to the owner of the other in all that marks the civilized man. Put a third structure in the immediate vicinity of these two, that should have but one color on its surface, including its blinds, and we think that nine persons in ten, except the very vulgar and uninstructed, would at once jump to the conclusion that the owner of this habitation was in tastes and refinement superior to both his 07060neighbors. A great improvement, however, in rural as well as in town architecture, is now in the course of introduction throughout all the northern States. More attention is paid to the picturesque than was formerly the case, and the effects are becoming as numerous as they are pleasing. We should particularize New Haven, as one of those towns that has been thus embellished of late years, and there are other places, of nearly equal size, that might be mentioned as having the same claims to an improved taste. But to return to the great distinctive features between an ordinary American landscape and a similar scene in Europe. Of the artificial accessories it is scarcely necessary to say any more. One does not expect to meet with a ruined castle or abbey, or even fortress, in America; nor, on the other hand, does the traveller look for the forests of America, or that abundance of wood, which gives to nearly every farm a sufficiency for all the common wants of life, on the plains and heights of the old world. Wood there certainly is, and possibly enough to meet the ordinary wants of the different countries, but it is generally in the hands of the governments or the great proprietors, and takes the aspect of forests of greater or less size, that are well cared for, cleared and trimmed like the grounds of a park.

Germany has, we think, in some respects a strong resemblance to the views of America. It is not so much wanting in detached copses and smaller plantations of trees as the countries farther south and east of it, while it has less of the naked aspect in general that is so remarkable in France. Detached buildings occur more frequently in Germany than in France especially, and we might add also in Spain.