566 COSMOS. 



influence exercised by nature on the civilisation and mental 

 development of mankind. It must, however, be admitted that 

 his points of connection are seldom felicitously chosen (as, for 

 instance, in VII. 24-47; XXV. 2; XXVI. 1; XXXV. 2; 

 XXXVI. 2-4; XXXVII. 1). Thus the consideration of the 

 nature of mineral and vegetable substances leads to the intro- 

 duction of a fragment of the history of the plastic arts, but 

 this brief notice has become more important in the present 

 state of our knowledge than all that we can gather regarding 

 descriptive natural history from the rest of the work. 



The style of Pliny evinces more spirit and animation than 

 true dignity, and it is seldom that his descriptions possess any 

 degree of pictorial distinctness. We feel that the author has 

 drawn his impressions from books and not from nature, how- 

 ever freely it may have been presented to him in the different 

 regions of the earth which he visited. A grave and sombre 

 tone of colour pervades the whole composition, and this sen- 

 timental feeling is tinged with a touch of bitterness whenever 

 he enters upon the consideration of the conditions of man and 

 his destiny. On these occasions, almost as in the writings of 

 Cicero, although with less simplicity of diction,* the aspect 

 of the grand unity of nature is adduced as productive of 

 encouragement and consolation to man. 



The conclusion of the Historia Naturalis of Pliny the great- 

 est Roman memorial transmitted to the literature of the middle 

 ages is composed in a true spirit of cosmical description. It 

 contains, in the condition in which we have possessed it since 

 1831,f a brief consideration of the comparative natural history 

 of countries in different zones, an eulogium of Southern 

 Europe between the Mediterranean and the chain of the Alps, 

 and a description in praise of the Hesperian sky, " where the 

 temperate and gentle mildness of the climate had," according 

 to a dogma of the older Pythagoreans, " early hastened the 

 liberation of mankind from barbarism.'' 



* " Est enim animorum ingeniorumque naturale quoddam quasi 

 pabulum consideratio contempiatioque naturae. Erigimur, elatiores 

 fieri videmur, humana despicimus, cogitantesque supera atque coelestia 

 haec nostra, ut exigua et minima, contemnimus." (Cic., Acad., ii. 41.) 

 ^ t Plin., xxxvii. 13 (ed. Sillig., t. v. 1836, p. 320). All earlier edi- 

 tions closed with the words " Hispaniam quacunque ambitur mari." 

 The conclusion of the work was discovered in 1831, in a Bamberg 

 Codex, by Herr Ludwig v. Jan, Professor at Schweinfurt. 



