DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 393 



Octavius, we meet with a spirited defence of the new faith 

 against the attacks of a heathen friend.* 



The present would appear to be a fitting place to introduce 

 some fragmentary examples of the descriptions of nature, 

 which occur in the writings of the Greek Fathers, and which 

 are probably less well known to my readers than the evidences 

 afforded by Roman authors, of the love of nature entertained 

 by the ancient Italians. I will begin with a letter of Basil 

 the Great, for which I have long cherished a special predilec- 

 tion. Basil, who was born at Cesarea in Cappadocia, re- 

 nounced the pleasures of Athens, when not more than thirty 

 years old, and, after visiting the Christian hermitages in 

 Co3lo-Syria and Upper Egypt, retired, like the Essenes and 

 Therapeuti before the Christian era, to a desert on the shores of 

 the Armenian river Iris. There his second brother f Naucra- 

 tius was drowned while fishing, after having led for five years 

 the rigid life of an anchorite. He thus writes to Gregory 

 of Nazianzum, " I believe I may at last flatter myself with 

 having found the end of my wanderings. The hopes of being 

 united with thee or I should rather say my pleasant dreams, 

 for hopes have been justly termed the waking dreams of men 

 have remained unfulfilled. God has suffered me to find a 

 place, such as has often flitted before our imaginations; for 

 that which fancy has shown us from afar, is now made mani- 

 fest to me. A high mountain clothed with thick woods, is 

 watered to the north by fresh and ever-flowing streams. 

 At its foot lies an extended plain, rendered fruitful by 

 the vapours with which it is moistened. The surrounding 

 forest, crowded with trees of different kinds, encloses me as 

 in a strong fortress. This wilderness is bounded by two 

 deep ravines ; on the one side the river rushing in foam down 

 the mountain, forms an almost impassable barrier, whilst on 



* Minutii Felicis Octavius, ex. rec. Gron. Roterod., 1743, cap. 2, 3, 

 p 12, 28; cap. 16-18, p. 151-171. 



t On the death of Naucratius, about the year 357, see BasiliiMagni, 

 Op. omnia, ed. Par. 1730, t. iii. p. xlv. The Jewish Essenes, two 

 centuries before our era, led an anchorite life on the western shores of 

 the Dead Sea, in communion with nature. Pliny, in speaking of them, 

 uses the graceful expression (v. 15), " mira gens, soda palmarum.'' 

 The Therapeuti lived originally in monastic communities, in a charm- 

 ing district near Lake Moeris (Neander, Allg. GeschicJUe der chrietL 

 Rdigian v.id X>rche, bd. /. abth. i., 1842, s. 73, 103). 



