MODERN TRAVELLERS. 71 



sensitive, and ever-hopeful spirit, a fortunate and happy life 

 was not reserved. 



If a disparaging sense has sometimes been attached to the 

 terms " descriptive and landscape poetry/' as applied to the 

 numerous descriptions of natural scenes and objects which in 

 the most modern times have more especially enriched German, 

 Trench, English, and North American literatures, yet such 

 censure is only properly applicable to the abuse of the sup- 

 posed enlargement of the field of art. Yersified descriptions 

 of natural objects, such as at the close of a long and dis- 

 tinguished literary career were given by Delille, cannot be 

 regarded, notwithstanding the refinements of language and 

 of metre expended on them, as the poetry of external nature 

 in the higher sense of the term : they lack poetic inspiration, 

 and are therefore strangers on true poetic ground ; they are 

 cold and meagre, as is all that glitters with mere outward 

 ornament. But if what has been called (as a distinct and 

 independent form) " descriptive poetry," be justly blamed, 

 such disapprobation cannot assuredly apply to an earnest 

 endeavour, by the force of language, by the power of sig- 

 nificant words, to bring the richer contents of our modern 

 knowledge of nature before the contemplation of the imagi- 

 nation as well as of the intellect. Should means be left 

 unemployed whereby we may have brought home to us not 

 only the vivid picture of distant zones over which others have 

 wandered, but also a portion even of the enjoyment afforded 

 by the immediate contact with nature ? The Arabs say 

 figuratively but truly that the best description is that in which 

 the ear is transformed into an eye ( 105 ). It is one of the 

 evils of the present time that an unfortunate predilection for 

 an empty species of poetic prose, and a tendency to indulge 



