SIDEREAL ASTRONOMY. 317 



two separate treatises, descriptive in different degrees of 

 detail, of the physical phenomena of the Heavens and the 

 Earth. To us, we confess, this part of the second volume 

 has the air of a separate dissertation, alien in date and sub- 

 stance from the materials with which it is now incorporated. 

 Unless the term Cosmos were interpreted as including the 

 history of man in his whole moral and intellectual being (in 

 which case this part of the work would be very inadequately 

 fulfilled), we cannot see the fitness of this treatise on poetic 

 descriptions of nature, on landscape-painting, and on the 

 culture of exotic plants. It is the most reasonable belief that 

 these chapters are an excrescence which has grown upon the 

 original plan of the author. 



Looking to the Chapters themselves, apart from such con- 

 siderations, we find in them a very agreeable collection of 

 passages, illustrating the genius and habits of different races 

 and communities of men in relation to the world of nature. 

 We are very ready to acknowledge the pleasure afforded us 

 by the examples so selected; but our author appears to 

 assign to them a higher value and interest than we believe 

 them actually to possess. Even admitting, what can hardly 

 be conceded, that we may take the natural taste or genius 

 of two or three writers as a criterion of the like qualities in 

 a nation or great community, it may fairly be questioned 

 whether there is any novelty in the inferences sought for ; 

 viz., that even in the earliest ages, and among every people 

 of mankind, there has been a perception of natural beauty 

 and sublimity a desire to express such feelings in language 

 or other form of representation and a great extension and 

 refinement of them by the culture of modern times and 

 civilised life. The fact is one so generally recognised, that 

 examples were scarcely needed to justify or enforce it. With- 

 out embarrassing ourselves by definitions or theories of the 

 Sublime and Beautiful in Nature, we feel it to be certain that 



