PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 235 



parts of the picture, their grouping gives to the whole the greatest 

 difference of character. 



Mineralogy is not more distinct from geology than is the individual 

 description of natural objects from a general description of the 

 physiognomy of nature. George Forster, in the narrative of his 

 voyages, and in his other publications Goethe, in the descriptions 

 of nature which so many of his immortal works contain Buffon, 

 Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand, have traced with in- 

 imitable truth of description the character of some of the zones 

 into which the earth is divided. Not only do such descriptions 

 afford us mental enjoyment of a high order, but the knowledge of 

 the character which nature assumes in different regions is moreover 

 intimately connected with the history of man, and of his civilization. 

 For although the commencement of this civilization is not solely 

 determined by physical relations, yet the direction which it takes, 

 the national character, and the more grave or gay dispositions of 

 men, are dependent in a very high degree on climatic influences. 

 How powerfully have the skies of Greece acted on its inhabitants ! 

 The nations settled in the fair and happy regions bounded by the 

 Euphrates, the Halys, and the Egean Sea, also early attained amenity 

 of manners and delicacy of sentiment. When in the middle ages 

 religious enthusiasm suddenly re-opened the sacred East to the 

 nations of Europe who were sinking back into barbarism, our an- 

 cestors in returning to their homes brought with them gentler 

 manners, acquired in those delightful valleys. The poetry of the 

 Greeks, and the ruder songs of the primitive northern nations, owe 

 great part of their peculiar character to the aspect of the plants 

 and animals seen by the bard, to the mountains and valleys which 

 surrounded him, and to the air which he breathed. And to recall 

 more familiar objects, who does not feel himself differently affected 

 in the dark shade of the beech, on hills crowned with scattered fir- 

 trees, or on the turfy pasture, where the wind rustles in the trem- 

 bling foliage of the birch? These trees of our native land have 

 often suggested or recalled to our minds images and thoughts, either 

 of a melancholy, of a grave and elevating, or of a cheerful character. 

 The influence of the physical on the moral world that reciprocal 

 and mysterious action and reaction of the material and the imma- 



