CHAPTER IV. 



THE WATERS OF THE AIR. 



" Waters devour and swallow up the earth ; waters 

 quench and kill the flames of fire ; they mount up aloft 

 into the air, and seem to challenge a seignory and do- 

 minion in the heavens also ; while by a thick ceiling and 

 floor, as it were, of clouds caused by the dim vapours 

 arising from them, that vital spirit which giveth life unto 

 all tilings, is debarred, stopped, and choked." 



ONE would almost think when Pliny wrote this 

 passage, that he must have had a sort of hydro- 

 phobia, a dread of that fluid, the absence of 

 which would turn our fair landscape into a 

 desert, and this fruitful plain into a waste and 

 barren wilderness. How differently old Gower 

 writes in the quaint but refreshing lines, 



" The moyst droppes of the reyne 

 Desceuden in to the middle erth, 

 And tempreth it to seed and erth, 

 And doth to springe gras and floure." 



Surely the smiling grass and soft turf acknow- 

 ledge anything rather than that " waters devour 



