GENERAL REMARKS. 5 



graceful phantoms, and at another developing the noble 

 germs of imitative art. 



I here limit myself to the consideration of incite- 

 ments to a scientific study of nature; and, in so doing, I 

 would recal the lessons of experience, which tell us how 

 often impressions received by the senses from circumstances 

 seemingly accidental, have so acted on the youthful mind as 

 to determine the whole direction of the man's course through 

 life. Childish pleasure in the form of countries and of seas, 

 as delineated in maps ( 2 ) ; the desire to behold those southern 

 constellations which have never risen in our horizon ( 3 ) ; the 

 sight of palms and of the cedars of Lebanon, figured in a 

 pictorial bible, may have implanted in the spirit the first 

 impulse to travels in distant lands. If I might have recourse 

 to my own experience, and say what awakened in me the 

 first beginnings of an inextinguishable longing to visit the 

 tropics, I should name George Forster's descriptions of the 

 islands of the Pacific paintings, by Hodge, in the house 

 of "Warren Hastings, in London, representing the banks of 

 the Ganges and a colossal dragon tree in an old tower of 

 the Botanic Garden at Berlin. These objects, which I here 

 cite as exemplifications taken from fact, belong respectively 

 to the three classes above noticed, viz. to descriptions of 

 nature flowing from a mind inspired by her contemplation, 

 to imitative art in landscape painting, and to the immediate 

 view of characteristic natural objects. Such incitements are, 

 however, only influential where general intellectual cultiva- 

 tion prevails, and when they address themselves to dispo- 

 sitions suited to their reception, and in which a particular 

 course of mental development has heightened the suscepti- 

 bility to natural impressions. 



