24 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY 



the soil, should freely bequeath that which he had 

 acquired ( 39 ). 



No description of the eternal snows of the Alps, when tinged 

 in the morning or evening with a rosy hue, of the beauty of 

 the blue glacier ice, or of any part of the grandeur of the 

 scenery of Switzerland, have reached us from the ancients, 

 although statesmen and generals, with men of letters in 

 their train, were constantly passing through Helvetia into 

 Gaul. All these travellers think only of complaining of 

 the difficulties of the way ; the romantic character of the 

 scenery never seems to have engaged their attention. It is 

 even known that Julius Caesar, when returning to his legions 

 in Gaul, employed his time, while passing over the Alps, in 

 preparing a grammatical treatise "De Analogia" ( 40 ). 

 Silius Italicus, who died under Trajan, when Switzerland 

 was already in great measure cultivated, describes the 

 district, of the Alps merely as an awful and barren wilder- 

 ness ( 41 ) ; although he elsewhere loves to dwell in verse on 

 the rocky ravines of Italy, and the wood-fringed banks of 

 the Liris (Garigliano) ( 42 ). It is,, deserving of notice that 

 the remarkable appearance of groups of jointed basaltic 

 columns, such as are seen in several parts of the interior of 

 France, ou the banks of the Rhine, and in Lombardy, never 

 engaged the attention of the Romans sufficiently to lead 

 their Avriters to describe or even to mention them. 



At the period when the feelings which had animated 

 classical antiquity, and had directed the minds of men to the 

 active manifestation of human power, almost to the exclu- 

 sion of the passive contemplation of the natural world, were 

 expiring, a new influence, and new modes of thought, were 



