SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS. JQ 



try : the Araucana of Don Alonso de Ercilla. Fray Luis de Leon and 

 Calderon, with the remarks on the same of Ludwig Tieck. Shakspeare, 

 Milton, Thomson — p. 74. French prose writers: Rousseau, BufFon, 

 Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand — p. 75-77. Review of 

 the narratives of the older travelers of the Middle Ages, John Mande- 

 ^ille, Hans Schiltberger, and Bernhard von Breitenbach ; contrast with 

 modem travelers. Cook's companion, George Forster — p. 80. The 

 blame sometimes justly applied to descriptive poetry as an independ- 

 ent form does not refer to the attempt either to give a picture of distant 

 zones visited by the writer, or to convey to others, by the force of 

 applicable words, an image of the results yielded by a direct contem- 

 plation of nature. All parts of the vast sphere of creation, from the 

 equator \o the frigid zones, are endowed with the happy power of ex- 

 ercising a vivid impression on the human mind — p. 82. 



II. Landscape painting in its animating influence on the study of na- 

 ture. In classical antiquity, m accordance with the respective mental 

 direction of different nations, landscape painting and the poetic delin- 

 eation of a particular region were neither of them independent objects 

 of art. The elder Philostratus. Scenography. Ludius. Evidences 

 of landscape painting among the Indians in the brilliant period of Vi- 

 kramaditya. Herculaneum and Pompeii. Painting among Christians, 

 from Constantino the Great to the beginning of the Middle Ages ; of 

 landscape painting in the historical pictures of the brothers Van Eyck. 

 The seventeenth century the most brilliant epoch of landscape paint- 

 ing. Miniatures on manuscripts — p. 87. Development of the ele- 

 ments of painting. (Claude Lorraine, Ruysdael, Gaspard and Nicolas 

 Poussin, Everdingen, Hobbima, and Cuyp.) Subsequent striving to 

 give natural truthfulness to the representation of vegetable forms. Rep- 

 resentation of tropical vegetation. Franz Post, the companion of Prince 

 Maurice of Nassau. Eckhout. Requirement for a representation of 

 the physiognomy of nature. The great and still imperfectly completed 

 cosmical event of the independence of Spanish and Portuguese Ameri- 

 ca, and the foundation of constitutional freedom in regions of the chain 

 of Cordilleras between the tropics, where there are populous cities sit- 

 uated at an elevation of 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, together 

 with the increasing civilization of India, New Holland, the Sandwich 

 Islands, and Southern Africa, will undoubtedly impart a new impulse 

 and a more exalted character to landscape painting, no less than to me- 

 teorology and descriptive geography. Importance and application of 

 Barker's panoramas. The conception of the unity of nature and the 

 feeling of the harmonious accord pervading the Cosmos will increase 

 in force among men in proportion to the multiplication of the means for 

 representing all natural phenomena in delineating pictures — p. 98. 



III. Cultivation of Exotic Plants. — Impression of the physiognomy 

 of vegetable forms, as far as plantations are capable of producing such 

 an impression. Landscape gardening. Earliest plantation of parks in 

 Central and Southern Asia. Trees and groves sacred to the gods — p. 

 102. The gardens of the nations of Eastern Asia. Chinese gardens 

 under the victorious dynasty of Han. Poem on a garden, by the Chi- 

 nese statesman See-ma-kuang, at the close of the eleventh century. 

 Prescripts of Li3u-tscheu. Poem of the Emperor Kien-long, descrip- 

 tive of nature. Influence of the connection of Buddhist monastic estab- 

 lishments on the distribution of beautiful characteristic vegetable Ibrmg 

 —p. 105. 



B. History of the Physical Contemplation of the Universe. — The histo 



