56 COSMOS. 



the nightingale and the rose," recurs with wearying frefj^iiency 

 and a genuine love of nature is lost in the East amid the art- 

 ificial conventionalities of the language of flowers. 



On. passing northward from the Iranian plateaux through 

 Turan (Tuirja* in the Zend) to the Uralian Mountains, which 

 separate Europe and Asia, we arrive at the primitive seat of 

 the Finnish race ; for the Ural is as much a land of the an- 

 3ient Fins as the Altai is of the ancient Turks. Among the 

 Finnish tribes who have settled far to the west in the low- 

 lands of Europe, Elias Lonnrot has collected from the lips of 

 the Karelians, and the country people of Olonetz, a large 

 number of Finnish songs, in which " there breathes," accord- 

 ing to the expression of Jacob Grimm, " an animated love of 

 nature rarely to be met with in any poetry but that of India."! 

 An ancient Epos, containing nearly three thousand verses, 

 treats of a fight between the Fins and Laps, and the fate of a 

 demi-god named Vaino. It gives an interesting account of 

 Finnish country life, especially in that portion of the work 

 where II marine, the wife of the smith, sends her flocks into 

 the w^oods, and offers up prayers for their safety. Few races 

 exhibit greater or more remarkable differences in mental cul- 

 tivation, and in the direction of their feelings, according as 

 they have been determined by the degeneration of servitude, 

 w'arlike ferocity, or a continual striving for political freedom, 

 than the Fins, who have been so variously subdivided, al- 

 though retaining kindred languages. In evidence of this, we 

 need only refer to the now peaceful population among whom 

 the Epos above referred to was found ; to the Huns, once cel- 

 ebrated for conquests that disturbed the then existing order of 

 things, and who have long been confounded with the Monguls ; 

 and, lastly, to a great and noble people, the Magyars. 



After having considered the extent to which intensity in 

 the love of nature and animation in the mode of its expression 

 may be ascribed to differences of race, to the peculiar influ- 

 ence of the configuration of the soil, the form of government, 

 and the character of religious belief, it now remains for us to 

 throw a glance over those nations of Asia v*^ho ofier the 



the evening dew as " the sweat of the moon." (Jos. von Hammer, s. 

 247 and 371.) • 



* Tflirja or Taran are names whose etymology is still miknown. 

 Jiamoui (Yacna, t. i., p. 427-430) has acutely called attention to the 

 Bactrian satrapy of Turiua or Turiva, mentioned in Strabo (lib. xi., p. 

 517, Cas.). Du Theil and Groskurd would, however, sabstit to th« 

 reading of Tapyria. See the work of the latter, th. ii., s, 410. 



+ Ueber ein Finnischcs Epos, Jacob Grimm, 1845, s. .5. 



