MODERN PROSE WRITERS. 



63 



winter, and from winter to reanimating spring; and the 

 pictures afforded by the varied laborious or pleasurable pur- 

 suits of men belonging to the different portions of the year. 

 Arriving at the period nearest to our own time, we find 

 that, since the middle of the last century, descriptive prose 

 has more particularly developed itself, and with peculiar vigour. 

 Although the study of nature, enlarging on every side, has 

 increased beyond measure the mass of things known 'to us, 

 yet amongst the few who are susceptible of the higher inspi- 

 ration which this knowledge is capable of affording, the in- 

 tellectual contemplation of nature has not sunk oppressed 

 under the load, but has rather gained a wider comprehen- 

 siveness and a loftier elevation, since a deeper insight has 

 been obtained into the structure of mountain masses (those 

 storied cemeteries of perished organic forms), and into the 

 geographical distribution of plants and animals, and the re- 

 lationship of different races of men. The first modern 

 prose writers who have powerfully contributed to awaken, 

 through the influence of the imagination, the keen per- 

 ception of natural beauty, the delight in contact with 

 nature, and the desire for distant travel which is their almost 

 inseparable companion, were in France, Jean Jacques 

 Eousseau, Buffon, Bernardin de St. -Pierre, and (to name 

 exceptionally one living writer), my friend Auguste de Cha- 

 teaubriand; in the British islands the ingenious Playfair; 

 and in Germany, George Porster, who was the companion of 

 Cook^on his second voyage of circumnavigation, and who 

 was gifted both with eloquence and with a mind peculiarly 

 favourable to every generalisation in the view of nature. 



I must not attempt in these pages to examine the charac- 

 teristics of these different writers ; or what it is that, in 



