314' ESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS. 



drama, must of course be distinguished from those in 

 which she appears only by way of simile, or comparison ; 

 the movement of the poem being meanwhile interrupted. 

 The most interesting of the latter class is to be found in 

 Shakspere^s ^ Venus and Adonis/ a piece in which the 

 rich romantic or quasi-mythological colouring is so high 

 as to permit the introduction of such imagery without 

 any perceptible loss of poetic dignity. The following is 

 the simile alluded to : — 



" Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, 

 Shi'inks backward in his shelly cave with pain, 



And there, all smother' d up, in shade doth sit, 

 Long after fearing to creep forth again ; 



So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled 



Into the deep dark cabins of her head." 



It would be difficult to find another equally beautiful 

 reference to the sensitive characteristic of the animal. 

 We cannot fail to observe that Homer, in accordance 

 with the sculpturesque tendency of Greek art, fixes 

 his attention more on the outward shelly covering ; but 

 the modern poets, in obedience to their more ' subjective'' 

 tendencies, give theirs rather to the inner sentient nature 

 of the inhabitant of the shell. 



But after taking this hurried glance from the summit 

 of Mount Parnassus, we must descend into the plains 

 of prose ; and having thus refi'eshed ourselves with a 

 draught from the Castalian spring, avc Avill present the 

 Geologists with a distant retrospect, which may be more 

 interesting to most of them than the view we have been 

 enjoying, although some of that learned body are not 

 ungifted with a vivid imagination. 



The difficult and vexed problem of geographical dis- 

 tribution is so intimatelv connected with the science of 



