PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 219 



yield an enjoyment of the noblest kind, but the know- 

 ledge of the character of nature in different regions is also 

 most intimately associated with the history of the human 

 race and its mental culture. For although the dawn of this 

 culture cannot have been determined solely by physical influ- 

 ence, climatic relations have at any rate to a great extent 

 influenced its direction, as well as the character of nations, 

 and the degree of gloom or cheerfulness in the dispositions 

 of men. How powerfully did the skies of Greece act on its 

 inhabitants! Was it not among the nations who settled in 

 the beautiful and happy region between the Euphrates, the 

 Halys, and the JEgean Sea, that social polish and gentler 

 feelings were first awakened? and was it not from these 

 genial climes that our forefathers, when religious enthusiasm 

 had suddenly opened to them the Holy Lands of the East, 

 brought back to Europe, then relapsing into barbarism, the 

 seeds of a gentler civilization? The poetical works of the 

 Greeks and the ruder songs of the primitive northern races 

 owe much of their peculiar character to the forms of plants 

 and animals, to the mountain- valleys in which their poets 

 dwelt, and to the air which surrounded them. To revert 

 to more familiar objects, who is there that does not feel 

 himself differently affected beneath the embowering shade 

 of the beechen grove, or on hills crowned with a few scat- 

 tered pines, or in the flowering meadow where the breeze 

 murmurs through the trembling foliage of the birch? A 

 feeling of melancholy, or solemnity, or of light buoyant 

 animation is in turn awakened by the contemplation of our 

 native trees. This influence of the physical on the moral 

 world — this mysterious reaction of the sensuous on the ideal, 

 gives to the study of nature, when considered from a higher 

 point of view, a peculiar charm which has not hitherto been 

 sufficiently recognised. 



However much the character of different regions of the 

 earth may depend upon a combination of all these external* 



