11 



ity were exhausted — we are told that the white- 

 headed veteran of the world, even in the last mo- 

 ment of his life, " played with flowers," and " bab- 

 bled of green fields !" 



Such, then, being the innate force and universality 

 of this passion, we may well wonder at the apparently 

 inadequate effects which it has produced. The de- 

 ficiencies of the ancients are certainly very striking, 

 if we compare their attempts in this department, with 

 their glorious achievements in poetry, eloquence, his- 

 tory and morals, — in sculpture and architecture, — not 

 only in those arts in which chiefly the taste and imag- 

 ination are concerned, but also in those which demand 

 a more vigorous exercise of the understanding, such 

 as mathematics, logic and metaphysics. The writings 

 of Cato and Varro, of iElian and Columella, are now 

 almost useless on account of the want of precision in 

 their descriptions of the objects and the processes 

 about which they treat ; and it would seem that, dur- 

 ing the sad lapse of time, of more than fourteen 

 hundred years which succeeded them, the class of 

 men whose minds were not altogether occupied with 

 rapine and bloodshed, scarcely ventured to see with 

 their own eyes ; or rather disdained to condescend 

 to aught lower than the workings of their own fan- 

 tastic imaginations. Nature, — the boundless exhibi- 

 tion of the ineffable power, wisdom, and beneficence 

 of the Creator, — was almost totally neglected, except 

 for purposes of poetic illustration ; or if referred to 

 with other views, it was rather to support some idol 



