398 COSMOS. 



selves over the inhospitable north as far as Iceland. The 

 happier climates of Southern Asia are not, however, exempt 

 from a certain deprivation, or, at least, an interruption of the 

 enjoyment of nature; for the seasons are abruptly divided 

 from each other by an alternation of fructifying rain and arid 

 destructive drought. In the West-Arian plateaux of Persia, 

 the barren wilderness penetrates in many parts in the form of 

 bays into the surrounding highly fruitful lands. A margin of 

 forest land often constitutes the boundary of these far extend- 

 ing seas of steppe, in Central and Western Asia. In this 

 manner the relations of the soil present the inhabitants of 

 these torrid regions with the same contrast of barrenness and 

 vegetable abundance in a horizontal plane, as is manifested 

 in a vertical direction, by the snow-covered mountain chains 

 of India and of Afghanistan. Great contrasts in seasons, 

 vegetation, and elevation are always found to be exciting ele- 

 ments of poetic fancy, where an animated love for the con- 

 templation of nature is closely interwoven with the mental 

 culture and the religious aspirations of a people. 



Pleasure in the contemplation of nature, which is consonant 

 with the characteristic bent of mind of the Germanic nations 

 is in the highest degree apparent in the earliest poems of the 

 middle ages, as may be proved by many examples from the 

 chivalric poetry of the Minnesingers, in the period of the Ho- 

 henstauffen dynasty. However numerous may be the histori- 

 cal points of contact connecting it with the romanesque songs of 

 the Proveii9als, we cannot overlook the genuine Germanic spirit 

 everywhere breathing through it. A deep and all-pervading 

 enjoyment of nature breathes through the manners and social 

 arrangements of the Germanic races, and through the very spirit 

 of freedom by which they are characterised. * Although moving 

 and often born in courtly circles, the wandering Minnesin- 

 gers never relinquished the habit of communing with nature. 

 It was thus that their productions w r ere often marked by a 

 fresh, idyllic, and even elegiac tone of feeling. In order to 



* Fried. Schlegel, Ueber nordische Dicliikunst, in his sammtliche 

 Werke, bd. x. s. 71 and 90. I may further cite, from the very early 

 times of Charlemagne, the poetic description of the Thiergarten at Aix, 

 enclosing both woods and meadows, and which occurs in the life of the 

 great emperor, by Angilbertus, Abbot of St. Eiques. (See Perte, 

 Monum., vol. i. p. 393-403. 



