BY THE GREEKS. 11 



and sea, of mountain and of plain, as well as with the 

 varying hours and seasons ? Or how, in the age when the 

 poetic tendency was highest, can emotions of the mind thus 

 awakened through the senses have failed to resolve them- 

 selves into ideal contemplation? The Greeks, we know, 

 imagined the vegetable world connected by a thousand 

 mythical relations with the heroes and the gods : avenging 

 chastisement followed injury to the sacred trees or plants. 

 But while trees and flowers were animated and personified, 

 the prevailing forms of poetry in which the peculiar mental 

 development of the Greeks unfolded itself, allowed but a 

 limited space to descriptions of nature. 



Yet, a deep sense of the beauty of nature breaks forth 

 sometimes even in their tragic poets, in the midst of deep 

 sadness, or of the most tumultuous agitation of the passions. 

 When QEdipus is approaching the grove of the Furies, the 

 chorus sings, "the noble resting-place of glorious Colonos, 

 where the melodious nightingale loves to dwell, and mourns 

 in clear and plaintive strains :" it sings " the verdant dark- 

 ness of the thick embowering ivy, the narcissus bathed in the 

 dews of heaven, the golden beaming crocus, and the ineradi- 

 cable, ever fresh-springing olive tree" ( 12 ). Sophocles, in 

 striving to glorify his native Colonos, places the lofty form 

 of the fate-pursued, wandering king, by the side of the sleep- 

 less waters of the Cephisus, surrounded by soft and bright 

 imagery. The repose of nature heightens the impression of 

 pain called forth by the desolate aspect of the blind exile, 

 the victim of a dreadful and mysterious destiny. Euripides ( 1S ) 

 also takes pleasure in the picturesque description of " the 

 pastures of Messenia and Laconia, refreshed by a thousand 



VOL. TI. c 



