r^ANUSCAPE PAINTERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 9» 



Post, of Haarlem, who accompanied Prince Maurice of Nas- 

 sau to Brazil, where that prince, who took great interest in all 

 Bubjects connected with the tropical world, was Dutch stadt- 

 holder, in the conquered Portuguese possessions, from 1637 to 

 1644. Post continued for many years to make studies from 

 nature at Cape St. Augustine, in the Bay of All Saints, on 

 the shores of the River St. Francisco, and at the lower course 

 of the Amazon.* These studies he himself partly executed 



* Franz Post, or Poost, was born at Haarlem in 1620, and died there 

 in 1680. His brother also accompanied Count Maurice of Nassau as 

 an architect. Of the paintings, some representing the banks of the 

 Amazon are to be seen in the picture gallery at Schleisheim, while 

 others are at Berlin, Hanover, and Prague. The line engravings in 

 Barlaus, Reise des Prinzen Montz von Nassau, and in the royal collec- 

 tion of copper-plate prints at Berlin, evince a fine conception of nature 

 in depicting the form of the coast, the nature of the gi'ound, and the 

 vegetation. They represent Musacefe, Cacti, palms, different species 

 of Ficus, with the well-known board-like excrescences at the foot of 

 the stem, Rhizophora?, and arborescent grasses. The picturesque Bra 

 zilian voyage is made to terminate (plate iv.), singularly enough, with 

 a German forest of pines which surround the castle of Dillenburg. The 

 remark in the text, on the influence which the establishment of botanic 

 gardens in Upper Italy, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, 

 may have exercised on the knowledge of the physiognomy of tropical 

 forms of vegetation, leads me here to draw attention to the well-founded 

 fact that, in the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus, who was equally 

 energetic in promoting the Aristotelian philosophy and the pursuit of 

 the science of nature, probably had a hot-house in the convent of the 

 Dominicans at Cologne. This celebrated man, who was suspected of 

 sorcery on account of his speaking machine, entertained the King of 

 the Romans, William of Holland, on his passage through Cologne on the 

 6th of January, 1259, in a large space in the convent garden, where he 

 preserved fruit-trees and plants in flower throughout the winter by 

 maintaining a pleasant degree of heat. The account of this banquet, 

 exaggerated into something marvelous, occurs in the Chronica Joannis 

 de Beka, written in the middle of the fourteenth century (Beka et Heda 

 de Episcopis UUrajectinis, recogn. ab. Arn. Buchelio, 1643, p. 79 ; Jour- 

 dain, Recherches Criiiqnes snr V Age des Traductions d'Ai'isiote, 1819, 

 p. 331 ; Buhle, Gesch. der Philosophic, th. v., s. 296). Although the 

 ancients, as we find from the excavations at Pompeii, made use of 

 panes of glass in buildings, yet nothing has been found to indicate the 

 use of glass or hot houses in ancient horticulture. The mode of con- 

 ducting heat by the caldaria into baths might have led to the construc- 

 tion of such forcing or hot houses, but the shortness of the Greek and 

 Italian winters must have caused the want of artificial heat to l)e less 

 felt in horticulture. The Adonis gardens {Kfjizot kduvUo^), so indica- 

 tive of the meaning of the festival of Adonis, consisted, according to 

 B5ckh, of plants in small pots, which were, no doubt, intended to rep. 

 resent the garden whore Aphrodite met Adonis, who was the symbol 

 of the quickly-fading bloom of youth, of luxuriant growth, and of rapid 

 decay. The festivals of Adonis were, therefore, seasons of solemn 

 ameutations for women, and belonged to the festivals in which the ao- 



