64 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 



works so extensively known, sometimes lends to their de- 

 scriptions of scenery such grace and charm, or at others 

 disturbs the impressions which the authors desire to awaken ; 

 but it may be permitted to a traveller who has derived his 

 knowledge principally from the immediate contemplation 

 of nature, to introduce here a few detached considerations 

 respecting a recent, and on the whole little cultivated, branch 

 of literature. 



Buffon, with much of grandeur and of gravity, embracing 

 simultaneously the structure of the planetary system, the 

 world of organic life, light, and magnetism and far more 

 profound in his physical investigations than his cotempo- 

 raries were aware of when he passes from the description 

 of the habits of animals to that of the landscape, shews in 

 his artificially-constructed periods, more rhetorical pomp than 

 individual truth to nature ; rather disposing the mind gene- 

 rally to the reception of exalted impressions, than taking 

 hold of it by such visible paintings of the actual life of 

 nature, as should render her actually present to the imagi- 

 nation. In perusing even his most justly celebrated efforts 

 in this department, we are made to feel that he has 

 never quitted middle Europe, and never actually beheld 

 the tropical world which he engages to describe. What, 

 however, we particularly miss in the works of this great 

 writer, is the harmonious connection of the representation 

 of nature with the expression of awakened emotion ; we miss 

 in him almost all that flows from the mysterious analogy 

 between the movements of the mind and the phenomena 

 perceived by the senses. 



Greater depth of feeling, and a fresher spirit of life, breathe 

 in Jean Jacques Rousseau, in Bernardin de St.-Pierre, and 



