414 COSMOS. 



generalisation in the conception of the mutual action of 

 natural phenomena, and this retrospection of an omnipresent 

 invisible power, which can renew the earth or crumble it to 

 dust, constitute a solemn and exalted rather than a glowing 

 and gentle form of poetic creation. 



Similar views of the Cosmos occur repeatedly in the Psalms* 

 (Psalm Ixv. 7-14, and Ixxiv. 15-17), and most fully perhaps 

 in the 37th chapter of the ancient, if not ante-mosaic Book of 

 Job. The meteorological processes which take place in the 

 atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapour, according 

 to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its colours, 

 the generation of hail and of the rolling thunder are described 

 with individualising accuracy; and many questions are pro- 

 pounded which we in the present state of our physical knowledge 

 may indeed be able to express under more scientific defini- 

 tions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily. The Book of Job is 

 generally regarded as the most perfect specimen of the poetry 

 of the Hebrews. It is alike picturesque in the delineation of 

 individual phenomena, and artistically skilful in the didactic 

 arrangement of the whole work. In all the modern languages 

 into which the Book of Job has been translated, its images 

 drawn from the natural scenery of the East, leave a deep im- 

 pression on the mind. " The Lord walketh on the heights of 

 the waters, on the ridges of the waves towering high beneath 

 the force of the wind." " The morning red has coloured the 

 margins of the earth, and variously formed the covering of 

 clouds, as the hand of man moulds the yielding clay." The 

 habits of animals are described, as for instance those of the 

 wild ass, the horse, the buffalo, the rhinoceros, and the croco- 

 dile, the eagle, and the ostrich. We see " the pure ether 

 spread during the scorching heat of the south wind, as a 

 melted mirror over the parched desert. "f Where nature has 



* Noble echoes of the ancient Hebraic poetry are found in the eleventh 

 century, in the hymns of the Spanish Synagogue poet, Salomo ben 

 Jehudih Gabirol, which contain a poetic paraphrase of the pseudo-Aris- 

 totelian book, De Mundo. See Die religiose Poesie der Juden in 

 Spamen, by Michael Sachs, 1845, s. 7, 217, and 229. The sketches 

 drawn from nature, and found in the writings of Mose ben Jakob ben 

 Esra (s. 69, 77, and 285), are full of vigour and grandeur. 



*t* I have taken the passages in the Book of Job from the translation 

 and exposition of Umbreit (1824), s. xxix.-xlii. and 290-314. (Com- 



