BY THE ARABIANS. 49 



efanospheric phenomena of storm, tempest,, and long desired 

 rain. Among faithful natural pictures of this class, I 

 would instance particularly Antar's Moallakat, which describes 

 the pasture fertilised by rain, and visited by swarms of hum- 

 ming insects ( 74 ) ; the fine descriptions of storms, both by 

 Amru'l Kais, and in the 7th book of the celebrated Hamasa 

 p 5 ), which are also distinguished by a high degree of local 

 truth; and lastly, the description in theNabegha Dhobyani ( 76 ) 

 of the swelling of the Euphrates, when its waters roll down 

 masses of reeds and trunks of trees. The eighth book of 

 the Hamasa, which is entitled " Travel arid Sleepiness/' 

 naturally attracted my attention: I soon found that the 

 " sleepiness" ( 77 ) belongs only to the first fragment of the 

 book, and even there is more excusable, as it is ascribed to a 

 night journey on a camel. 



I have endeavoured in this section to unfold in a frag- 

 mentary manner the different influence which the external 

 world, that is, the aspect of animate and inanimate nature, 

 has exercised at different epochs, and among different races 

 and nations, on the inward world of thought and feeling. 

 I have tried to accomplish this object by tracing throughout 

 the history of literature, the particular characteristics of the 

 vivid manifestation of the feelings of men in regard to nature. 

 In this, as throughout the whole of the work, my aim has 

 been to give not so much a complete, as a general, view, by 

 the selection of such examples as should best display the 

 peculiarities of the various periods and races. I have followed 

 the Greeks and Romans to the gradual extinction of those 

 feelings which have given to classical antiquity in the West 

 an imperishable lustre; I have traced in the writings of 



