32 COSMOS. 



mountain behind the old towers of Arpinum, we see the grovo 

 of oaks on the margin of the Fibrenus, and the island now 

 called Isola di Carnello, which is formed by the division of 

 the stream, and whither Cicero retired, in order, as he said, to 

 "give himself up to meditation, reading, and writing." Ar- 

 pinum, situated on the Volscian Hills, was the birth-place of 

 the great statesman, and its noble scenery no doubt exercised 

 an influence on his character in boyhood. Unconsciously to 

 himself, the external aspect of the surrounding scenery im- 

 presses itself upon the soul of man with an intensity corre- 

 sponding to the greater or less degree of his natural suscepti- 

 bility, and becomes closely interwoven with the deep original 

 tendencies and the free natural disposition of his mental 

 powers. 



In the midst of the eventful storms of the year 708 (from 

 the foundation of Rome), Cicero found consolation in his villas, 

 alternately at Tusculum, Arpinum, Cumasa, and Antium. 

 " Nothing can be more delightful," he Mrrites to Atticus,* 

 " than this solitude — nothing more charming than this coun- 

 try place, the neighboring shore, and the view of the sea. In 

 the lonely island of Astura, at the mouth of the river of the 

 same name, on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea, no human 

 being disturbs me ; and when, early in the morning, I retire 

 to the leafy recesses of some thick and wild wood, I do not 

 leave it till the evening. Next to my Atticus, nothing is so 

 dear to me as solitude, in which I hold communion with phi- 

 losophy, although often interrupted by my tears. I struggle 

 as much as I am able against such emotions, but as yet I am 

 not equal to the contest." It has frequently been remarked, 

 that in these letters, and in those of the younger Pliny, pas- 

 sages are met with which manifest the greatest harmony with 

 the expressions in use among modern sentimental writers ; for 

 my own part, I can only find in them the echoes of the same 

 deep-toned sadness which in every age and in every race bursts 

 forth from the recesses of the heavily-oppressed bosom. 



Amid the general difiusion of Roman literature, an ac- 

 quaintance with the great poetic works of Virgil, Horace, 

 and Tibullus is so common, that it would be superfluous to 

 dwell on individual examples of the tender and ever wakeful 

 sensibility to nature, by which some of these works are ani- 

 mated. In Virgil's great epic, the nature of the poem tends 

 to make descriptions of scenery appear merely as accessories, 



* Cic.y Ep. ad AtticAim, xii., 9 and 15. 



