NATURAL DESCRIPTIONS IN THE HEBREW WRITERS. 57 



strongest contrast to the Arian or Indo-Germanic races, or, ui 

 other words, to the Indians and Persians. 



The Semitic or Aramseic nations afford evidence of a pro- 

 found sentiment of love for nature in the most ancient and 

 venerable monuments of their poetic feeling and creative fan- 

 cy. This sentiment is nobly and vividly manifested in their 

 pastoral effusions, in their hymns and choral songs, in all the 

 splendor of lyric poetry in the Psalms of David, and in the 

 schools of the seers and prophets, vv^hose exalted inspiration, 

 almost wholly removed from the past, turns its prophetic as- 

 pirations to the future. 



The Hebraic poetry, besides all its innate exalted sublimity, 

 presents the nations of the West with the special attraction 

 of being interwoven with numerous reminiscences connected 

 with the local seat of the religion professed by the followers 

 of the three most widely-diffused forms of belief, Judaism, 

 Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Thus missions, favoxed 

 by the spirit of commerce, and the thirst for conquest evinced 

 by maritime nations, have combined to bear the geographical 

 names and natural descriptions of the East as they are preserved 

 to us in the books of the Old Testament, far into the ibrests of 

 the New World, and to the remote islands of the Pacific. 



It is a characteristic of the poetry of the Hebrews, that, as 

 a reflex of monotheism, it always embraces the universe in its 

 unity, comprising both terrestrial life and the luminous realms 

 of space. It dwells but rarely on the individuality of phe- 

 nomena, preferring the contemplation of great masses. The 

 Hebrew poet does not depict nature as a self-dependent object, 

 glorious in its individual beauty, but always as in relation and 

 subjection to a higher spiritual power. Nature is to him a 

 work of creation and order, the living expression of the omni- 

 presence of the Divinity in the visible world. Hence the lyr- 

 ical poetry of the Hebrews, from the very nature of its subject, 

 is grand and solemn, and when it treats of the earthly condi- 

 tion of mankind, is full of sad and pensive longing. It is 

 worthy of remark, that Hebrew poetry, notwithstanding its 

 grandeur, and the lofty tone of exaltation to which it is often 

 elevated by the charm of music, scarcely ever loses the rie- 

 straint of measure, as does the poetry of India. Devoted to 

 the pure contemplation of the Divinity, it remains clear and 

 simple in the midst of the most figurative forms of expression, 

 dehghting in comparisons which recur with almost rhythmic 

 al regularity. 



As descriptions of nature, the writings of the Old Testa 



C 2 



