60 C0.BM03. 



Where nature has but sparingly bestowed her gifts, the senses 

 of man are sharpened, and he marks every change in the mov- 

 ing clouds of the atmosphere around him, tracing in the soli- 

 tude of the dreary desert, as on the face of the deep and mov- 

 ing sea, every phenomenon through its varied changes, back 

 to the signs by which its coming was proclaimed. The cli- 

 mate of Palestine, especially in the arid and rocky portions of 

 the country, is peculiarly adapted to give rise to such observ- 

 ations. 



The poetic literature of the Hebrews is not deficient in va- 

 riety of fonn ; for while the Hebrew poetry breathes a tone 

 of warlike enthusiasm from Joshua to Samuel, the little book 

 of the gleaner Ruth presents us with a charming and exqui- 

 sitely simple picture of nature. Gothe,* at the period of his 

 enthusiasm for the East, spoke of it " as the loveliest speci- 

 men of epic and idyl poetry which we possess." 



Even in more recent times, we observe in the earliest lit- 

 erature of the Arabs a faint reflection of that grand, contem- 

 plative consideration of nature which was an original charac- 

 teristic of the Semitic races. I would here refer to the pic- 

 turesque delineation of Bedouin desert life, which the gram- 

 marian Asmai has associated with the great name of Antar, 

 and has interwoven with other pre-Mohammedan sagas of 

 heroic deeds into one great work. The principal character in 

 this romantic novel is the Antar (of the race of Abs, and son 

 of the princely leader Scheddad and of a black slave), whose 

 verses have been preserved among the prize poems {Moalla- 

 kat) hung up in the Kaaba. The learned English translator, 

 Terrick Hamilton, has remarked the Biblical tone which 

 breathes through the style of Antar.f Asmai makes the son 



and exposition of Umbreit (1824), s. xxix.-xlii., and 290-314. (Com- 

 pare, generally, Gesenius, Geschichte der Hebr. Sprache und Schrift, s. 

 33 ; and Johi Antiquissimi Carminis Hebr. Natura atque Virtutes, ed. 

 Ilgen, p. 28.) The longest and most characteristic description of an an- 

 imal which we meet with in Job is that of the crocodile (xl., 25 — xli., 

 26), and yet it contains one of the evidences of the wiiter being him- 

 self a native of Palestine. (Umbreit, s. xli. and 308.) As the river- 

 horse of the Nile and the crocodile were formerly found throughout the 

 whole Delta of the Nile, it is not surprising that the knowledge of such 

 strangely-formed animals should have spread into the contiguous region 

 of Palestine. 



* Gothe, in his Commentar zum west-ostlichen Divan, s. 8. 



t Antar, a Bedouin romance, translated from the Arabic by Terrick 

 Hamilton, vol. i., p. xxvi. ; Hammer, in the Wiener Jakrbuchern der 

 Litteratur, bd. vi., 1819, s. 229 ; RosenmUller, in the Charakteren def 

 vornehmsten Dichter alter Nationen, bd. v. (1798), s. 251. 



