42 COSMOS. 



shores iu peaceful sport." We meet with the same. senti- 

 mental and plaintive expression regarding nature in the writ- 

 ings of Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil the Great. 

 " When," he exclaims, " I see every ledge of rock, every val- 

 ley and plain, covered with new-born verdure, the varied 

 beauty of the trees, and the lilies at my feet decked by nature 

 with the double charms of perfume and of color ; when in the 

 distance I see the ocean, toward which the clouds are onward 

 borne, my spirit is overpowered by a sadness not wholly de- 

 void of enjoyment. When in autumn the fruits have passed 

 away, the leaves have fallen, and the branches of the trees, 

 dried and shriveled, are robbed of their leafy adornments, we 

 are instinctively led, amid the everlasting and regular change 

 in nature, to feel the harmony of the wondrous powers per- 

 vading all things. He who contemplates them with the eye 

 of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid the greatness of 

 the universe."* 



While the Greek Christians were led by their adoration 

 of the Deity through the contemplation of his works to a po- 

 etic delineation of nature, they were at the same time, during 

 the earlier-ages of their new belief, and owing to the peculiar 

 bent of their minds, full of contempt for all works of human 

 art. Thus Chrysostom abounds in passages like the follow- 

 ing : " If the. aspect of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings 

 would lead thy spirit astray, look upward to the vault of 

 heaven, and around thee on the open fields, in which herds 

 graze by the water's side ; who does not despise all the crea- 

 tions of art, when, in the stillness of his spirit, he watches 

 with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden 

 light over the face of the earth ; when, resting on the thick 

 grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the somber 

 shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far-reced- 

 ing and hazy distance ?"t Antioch was at that time sur- 



* The quotation given in the text from Gregory of Nyssa is composed 

 of several fragments literally translated. They occur in S. Gregorii 

 Nysseni, Op., ed. Par., 1615, t. i., p. 49, C; p. 589, D; p. 210, C; p. 

 780, C ; t. ii., p. 860, B ; p. 619, B ; p. 619, D ; p. 324, D. " Be gentle 

 toward the emotions of sadness," says Thalassius, in one of the apho- 

 risms which were so much admired by his cotemporaries (Biblioth. Pa- 

 trum, ed. Par., 1624, t. ii., p. 1180, C). 



t See Joannis Chrysoslomi Op. omnia, Par., 1838 (8vo, t. ix., p. 687, 

 A; t. ii., p. 821, A, and 851, E; t. i., p. 79). Compare, also, Joannis 

 Philoponi in cap. 1. Geneseos de Creatione Mundi libri septem, Vienna 

 Aust., 1630, p. 192, 236, and 272, as also Georgii Pisidas Mundi Opifici- 

 m, ed. 1596. v. 367-375, 560, 933, and 1248. The works of Basil and 

 of Gregory of Nnzianzum soon arrested my attention, after I began to 



