GENERAL RETROSPECT. 417 



tion; I soon found, however, that " sleepiness"* was limited 

 to the first fragment of the book, and that the choice of the 

 subject was the more excusable, as the composition is referred 

 to a night journey on a camel. 



I have endeavoured in this section to manifest in a fragment- 

 ary manner, the different influence exercised by the external 

 world, or the aspect of animate and inanimate nature at different 

 periods of time, on the thoughts and mode of feeling of different 

 races. I have extracted from the history of literature the cha- 

 racteristic expressions of the love of nature. My object, there- 

 fore, as throughout the whole of this work, has been to give 

 general rather than complete views, by the selection of examples 

 illustrative of the peculiar characteristics of different epochs and 

 different races of men. I have noticed the changes manifested in 

 the literature of the Greeks and Romans, to the gradual decay of 

 those feelings which gave an imperishable lustre to classical an- 

 tiquity in the West, and I have traced in the writings of the early 

 fathers of the Christian church, the beautiful expression of a love 

 of nature, developed in the calm seclusion of an anchorite life. 

 In considering the Indo-Germanic races (using the term in its 

 strictest definition), we have passed from the German poetry of 

 the middle ages, to that of the highly civilised ancient East Arians 

 (Indians) and of the less favoured West Arians or inhabitants 

 of ancient Iran. After a rapid glance at the Celtic Gaelic 

 songs, and the recently discovered Finnish epos, I have deli- 

 neated the rich life of nature that breathes forth from the 

 exalted compositions of the Hebrews and Arabs races of 

 Semitic or Aramteic origin; and thus we have traced the 

 images reflected by the external world on the imagination of 

 nations dwelling in the north and south-east of Europe, in 

 Western Asia, in the Persian plateaux, and in the Indian 

 tropical regions. I have been induced to pursue this course 

 from the idea that in order to comprehend nature in all its vast 

 sublimity, it would be necessary to present it under a two-fold 

 aspect, first objectively as an actual phenomenon, and next 

 subjectively as it is reflected in the feelings of mankind. 



may soon expect an excellent and complete version of the Arabian poetry 

 descriptive of nature, in the writings of Hamasa, from our great poet 

 Friedrich Ruckert. 



* HamascB Carmina, ed. Freytag, P. i. 1828, p. 788, " Here finishes," 

 it is said in p. 796, " the chapter on travel and sleepiness." 



2E 



