52 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 



general revival of classical literature, we find, as the first 

 example among prose writers, a charming description of 

 nature from the pen of the lover of the arts, the counsellor 

 and friend of Eaphael, Cardinal Bembo. His juvenile work, 

 entitled JStna Dialogus, gives us an animated picture of the 

 geographical distribution of plants on the declivity of the 

 mountain, from the rich corn fields of Sicily to the snow- 

 covered margin of the crater. The finished work of his 

 maturer years, the Historise Yenetse, characterises in a still 

 more picturesque manner the climate and the vegetation of 

 the new continent. 



At that period every thing concurred to fill the mind at 

 once with views, of the suddenly enlarged boundaries both 

 of the earth, and of the powers of man. In antiquity, the 

 inarch of the Macedonian army to the Paropamisus, and 

 to the forest-covered river-valleys of Western Asia, left 

 impressions derived from the aspect of a richly adorned 

 exotic nature, of which the vividness manifested itself whole 

 centuries afterwards in the works of highly gifted writers y 

 and now, in like manner, the western nations were acted 

 upon a second time, and in a higher degree than by the 

 crusades, by the discovery of America. The tropical world, 

 with all the richness and luxuriance of its vegetation in the 

 plain, with all the gradations of organic life on the declivities 

 of the Cordilleras, with all the reminiscences of northern 

 climates in the inhabited plateaus of Mexico, New Grenada, 

 and Quito, was now first disclosed to the vie r of Europeans. 

 Imagination, without which no truly great work of man can 

 be accomplished, gave a peculiar charm to the descriptions 

 of nature traced by Columbus and Yespucci. The descrip- 

 tion of the coast of Brazil, by the latter, is characterised by 



