THE PASTORAL AND ROMANTIC. 25 



in the country. The association of the woods and fields 

 with the rural deities of the ancients is a part of our 

 modern sentiment of the pastoral and romantic. Keats 

 has founded his poem of " Endymion " on this sentiment, 

 which greatly magnifies the agreeable impressions we de- 

 rive from natural objects. In the mind of Keats all 

 nature was a paradise of rural deities and beautiful objects 

 of human love. 



We look upon nature with more depth of affection 

 when we have learned to people all the groves, hills, and 

 fountains with their appropriate deities. The stream that 

 winds through the valley is the more beautiful when it 

 proceeds as it were from the urn of the naiad ; and the 

 sounds that reverberate from the hills produce a more 

 animated sensation when we listen to them as the voice 

 of the solitary Echo banished to her shell. A constant 

 use of mythological figures, in our descriptions of nature 

 would be tiresome and commonplace ; but the frugal and 

 ingenious coloring of those descriptions with mythological 

 imagery is always agreeable and poetical. 



