ROUSSEAU. ST.-PIEEUE. 65 



in Chateaubriand. If in the first-named writer (whose 

 principal works were twenty years earlier than Buffon's fan- 

 ciful Epoques de la Nature) ( 101 ) I allude to his fascinating 

 eloquence, and to the picturesque descriptions of Clarens 

 and La Meillerie on Lake Leman, it is because, in the most 

 celebrated works of this ardent but little informed plant- 

 collector, poetical inspiration shews itself principally in the 

 inmost peculiarities of the language, breaking forth no less 

 overflowingly in his prose, than in Klopstock's, Schiller's, 

 Goethe'' s, and Byron's imperishable verse. Even where 

 an author has no purpose in view immediately connected 

 with the study of nature, our love for that study may still be 

 enhanced by the magic charm of a poetic representation of 

 the life of nature, although in regions of the earth already 

 familiar to us. 



In referring to modern prose writers, I dwell with pe- 

 culiar complacency on that small production of the creative 

 imagination to which Bernardin de St.-Pierre owes the fairest 

 portion of his literary fame I mean Paul and Virginia : a 

 work such as scarcely any other literature can shew. It is 

 the simple but living picture of an island in the midst of the 

 tropic seas, in which, sometimes smiled on by serene and 

 favouring skies, sometimes threatened by the violent conflict 

 of the elements, two young and graceful forms stand out 

 picturesquely from the wild luxuriance of the vegetation of 

 the forest, as from a flowery tapestry. Here, and in the 

 Chaumiere Indienne, and even in the Etudes de la Nature, 

 (which are unhappily disfigured by extravagant theories and 

 erroneous physical views), the aspect of the sea, the grouping 

 of the clouds, the rustling of the breeze in the bushes of tho 

 bamboo, a r id the waving of the lofty palms, are painted with 



