06 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 



\ 



inimitable truth. Bernardin de St. -Pierre's master- work, , 

 Paul and Virginia, accompanied me into the zone to which 

 it owes its origin. It was read there for many years by my 

 dear companion and friend Bonpland and myself, and there 

 (let this appeal to personal feelings be forgiven) under the 

 silent brightness of the tropical sky, or when, in the rainy 

 season on the shores of the Orinoco, the thunder crashed 

 and the flashing lightning illuminated the forest, we were 

 deeply impressed and penetrated with the wonderful truth 

 with, which this little work paints the power of nature in the 

 tropical zone in all its peculiarity of 'character. A similar 

 firm grasp of special features, without impairing the general 

 impression or depriving the external materials of the free 

 and animating breath of poetic imagination, characterises in 

 an even higher degree the ingenious and tender author of 

 Atala, Rene, the Martyrs, and the Journey to Greece and 

 Palestine. The contrasted landscapes of the most varied 

 portions of the earth's surface are brought together and made 

 to pass before the mind's eye with wonderful distinctness 

 of vision: the serious grandeur of historic remembrances 

 could alone have given so much of depth and repose to the 

 impressions of a rapid journey. 



In our German fatherland, the love of external nature 

 showed itself but too long, as in Italian and Spanish litera- 

 ture, under the forms of the idyl, the pastoral romance, and 

 didactic poems : this was the course followed by the 

 Persian traveller Paul Elemming, Brockes, Ewald von Kleist, 

 in whom we recognise a mind full of feeling, Hagedorn, 

 Solomon Gessner, and by one of the greatest naturalists of 

 all times, Haller, whose local descriptions present, however, 

 better defined outlines and more objective truth of colour. 



