42 DK^JRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY 



(Kei Kawuf,) is induced by the description to undertake an 

 expedition to the, Caspian, and to attempt a new conquest ( 65 ). 

 Enweri, Dschelaleddin E/umi (who is considered the greatest 

 mystic poet of the East)^ Adhad, and the half Indian Feisi, 

 have written poems *t spring, parts of which breathe poetic 

 life and freshness, although in other parts our enjoyment is 

 often unpleasingly disturbed by petty efforts in plays on words 

 and artificial comparisons ( 66 ). Joseph von Hammer, in 

 his great work on the history of Persian poetry, remarks of 

 Sadi, in the Bostan and Gulistan (Fruit and Rose Gardens), 

 and of Hafiz, whose joyous philosophy of life has been com- 

 pared with that of Horace, that we find in the first an 

 ethical teacher, and in the love songs of the second, lyrical 

 flights of no mean beauty ; but that in both the descriptions 

 of nature are too often marred and disfigured by turgidity 

 and false ornament ( 6 ?). The favourite subject of Persian 

 poetry, the loves of the nightingale and the rose, is weari- 

 some, from its perpetual recurrence ; and the genuine love 

 of nature is stifled in the East under the conventional 

 prettinesses of the language of flowers. 



Mien we proceed northwards from the Iraunian highlands 

 through Turan (in the Zend Tuirja) ( 68 ), into the chain of 

 the Ural which forms the boundary between Europe and 

 Asia, we find ourselves in the early seat of the Finnish races ; 

 for the Ural is as deserving of the title of the ancient land 

 of the Fins as the Altai is of that of the Turks. Among 

 the Fins who have settled far to the west in European low- 

 lands, Elias LonnroJ; has collected, from the lips of the 

 Karelians and the country people of Olonetz, a great 

 number of Finnish songs, in which Jacob Grimm ( 69 ) 

 finds, in regard to nature, a tone of emotion and of reverie 



