MODERN PROSE WRITERS. 75 



ment of enjoyment derived from communion with nature, and 

 consequently, also, to give impetus to its inseparable accom- 

 paniment, the love of distant travels, we may mention in 

 France Jean Jacques Rousseau, Buflbn, and Bernardin de 

 St. Pierre, and, exceptionally to include a still living author, 

 I would name my old friend Auguste de Chateaubriand ;* in 

 Great Britain, the intellectual Play fair ; and in Germany, 

 Cook's companion on his second voyage of circumnavigation, 

 the eloquent George Forster, who was endowed with so pe- 

 culiarly happy a faculty of generalization in the study of nature. 

 It would be foreign to the present work were I to under- 

 take to inquire into the characteristics of these writers, and 

 investigate the causes which at one time lend a charm and 

 grace to the descriptions of natural scenery contained in their 

 universally-diffused works, and at another disturb the impres- 

 sions which they were designed to call forth ; but as a trav- 

 eler, who has derived the greater portion of his knowledge 

 from immediate observation, I may perhaps be permitted to 

 introduce a few scattered remarks on a recent, and, on the 

 whole, but little cultivated branch of literature. Buffon 

 great and earnest as he was simultaneously embracing a 

 knowledge of the planetary structures, of organization, and of 

 the laws of light and magnetic forces, and far more profoundly 

 versed in physical investigations than his cotemporaries sup- 

 posed, shows more artificial elaboration of style and more rhe- 

 torical pomp than individualizing truthfulness when he passes 

 from the description of the habits of animals to the delinea- 

 tion of natural scenery, inclining the mind to the reception of 

 exalted impressions rather than seizing upon the imagination 

 by presenting a visible picture of actual nature, or conveying 

 to the senses the echo, as it were, of reality. Even through- 

 out the most justly celebrated of his works in this department 

 of literature, we instinctively feel that he could never have 

 left Central Europe, and that he is deficient in personal ob- 

 servation of the tropical world, which he believes he is cor- 

 rectly describing. But that which we most especially miss 

 in the writings of the great naturalist is a harmonious mode 

 of connecting the representation of nature with the expression 

 of awakened feelings ; he is, in fact, deficient in almost all 

 that flows from the mysterious analogy existing between the 

 mental emotions of the mind and the phenomena of the per- 

 ceptive world. 



* [This distinguished writer died July 4th of the present year 

 (1848).] 2V. 



