SIDEEEAL ASTBONOMY. 319 



the world of nature. Baron Humboldt, however, is ample, 

 just, and eloquent in his appreciation of the sacred poetry of 

 the Hebrews. He speaks, and with much truth, of the 104th 

 Psalm as a ( picture of the entire Cosmos.' The most casual 

 and careless reader of the passages quoted from it will indeed 

 see how marvellously they outshine the minor a sidera of the 

 other examples ; not less in the grandeur of the objects indi- 

 vidually presented, than in the comprehensiveness of this 

 great picture of nature in its relation to the Creator of the 

 whole. Our author alludes in terms of like admiration to 

 other portions of the Psalms and Book of Job ; and quotes 

 with full assent what is said by Goethe of the Book of Ruth, 

 that ' we have nothing so lovely in the whole range of epic 

 and idyllic poetry.' 



In treating of the temperament and culture of the Greeks 

 and Romans as regards the perception of natural beauty, he 

 cites various passages more or less familiar to the classical 

 reader. Numerous others might of course be added from 

 this rich storehouse of poetic conceptions and imagery. We 

 confess, however, we think our author too generous in his 

 estimate of Cicero's love of nature and rural retirement. 

 Particular portions of his epistles and philosophic works may 

 seem to justify this ; but in some of these we are compelled 

 to recognise political discontent; in others, the love of his 

 own eloquent and beautiful descriptions. The affections of 

 Cicero were really in Rome, even amidst the turbulence of 

 those distracted days of an expiring Republic. ' Urbem, 

 urbem, mi Rufe, cole, et in istd luce vivej is his earnest 

 exclamation to a friend ; and one more genuine, we fear, than 

 any eulogium on his Tusculan or other villas. 



But amidst this exuberance of poetic passages, we yet have 

 before us the extraordinary fact that neither Greeks nor 

 Romans ever reached the just perception of what we term 

 landscape-, that grouping of objects by form, colouring, 





