72 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 



in sentimental effusions, has seized simultaneously in different 

 countries on authors otherwise possessed of merit as tra- 

 vellers, and as writers on subjects of natural history. This 

 nixture is still more unpleasing, when the style, from the 

 absence of literary cultivation, and especially of all true in- 

 ward spring of emotion, degenerates into rhetorical inflation 

 and spurious sentimentality. Descriptions of nature, I 

 would here repeat, may be sharply denned and scientifically 

 correct, without being deprived thereby of the vivifying 

 breath of imagination. The poetic element must be derived 

 from a recognition of the links which unite the sensuous 

 with the intellectual; from a feeling of the universal extension, 

 the reciprocal limitation, arid the unity of the forces which 

 constitute the life of Nature. The more sublime the objects, 

 the more carefully must all outward adornment of language 

 be avoided. The true and proper effect of a picture of 

 nature depends upon its composition, and the impression 

 produced by it can only be disturbed and marred by the 

 intrusions of elaborate appeals on the part of its presenter. 

 He who, familiar with the great works of antiquity, and in 

 secure possession of the riches of his native tongue, knows how 

 to render with simplicity and characteristic truth that which 

 he has received by his own contemplation, will not fail, 

 in the impression which he desires to convey; and the 

 risk of failure will be less, as in depicting external nature, 

 and not his own frame of mind, he leaves unfettered the 

 freedom of feeling in others. 



But it is not alone the animated description of those 

 richly adorned lands of the equinoctial zone, in which in- 

 tensity of light and of humid warmth accelerates and 

 heightens the development of all organic germs, which has 



