Preface.

The selections contained in this volume are such as relate to one subject only—that of country life. But this, in itself, is a very wide sphere, and offers in its many different fields, old and new, all the variety that the most capricious spirit could desire. In collecting the different passages, the editor has allowed herself a wide sweep of the net; it has been her aim to bring together many beautiful passages from the best writers, mingled with others interesting rather from their quaintness and oddity, or their antiquity. With this view, not only have the poets of our own tongue, ancient and modern, English and American, been laid under contribution for the reader’s amusement, but translations from a dozen different languages have also been included in the volume. Materials for a work of this nature abound, and the editor 6would have gladly drawn even more largely from the sources open to her, not only from the older authors, but from many writers of our own day also. It was desirable, however, that the volume should not reach

an unwieldy size, as it was intended for pleasant companionship—the summer-seat, under a shady tree, or the chimney corner in winter—rather than for the prouder position allotted to the ponderous quarto on the library shelf. A word of especial apology is perhaps needed, regarding some of our omissions; “Comus,” the “Allegro and Penseroso,” Gray’s “Elegy” and “Ode to Spring,” with other poems of that class, though peculiarly fitted for a compilation of this kind, will not be found in our table of Contents. But they have already been so often printed and misprinted, quoted and misquoted!

In this instance their very absence will serve to recall them to the reader’s memory.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

The ancient classical writers of the world are thought to have shown but little sensibility to that natural beauty with which the earth has been clothed, as with a magnificent garment, by her Almighty Creator. Those of their works which have been preserved to us are declared by critics rarely to bear evidence of much depth of feeling of this kind. The German scholars are understood to have been the first to broach this opinion—the first to point out the fact, and to comment on what appears a singular inconsistency.

“If we bear in mind,” says Schiller, “the beautiful scenery with which the Greeks were surrounded, and remember the opportunities possessed by a people living in so genial a climate, of entering into the free enjoyment of the contemplation of nature, and observe how conformable were their mode of thought, the bent of their imaginations, and the habits of their lives to the simplicity of nature, which was so faithfully reflected in their poetic works, we can not fail to remark with surprise how few traces are to be met among them of the sentimental interest with which we in modern times attach ourselves to the individual characteristics of natural scenery. The Greek poet is certainly in the highest degree correct, faithful, and circumstantial in his descriptions of nature, but his heart has more share in his words than if he were treating of a garment, a shield, or a suit of armor. Nature seems to interest his understanding more than his moral perceptions; he does not cling to her charms with the fervor and the plaintive passion of the poet of modern times.”

14This passage of Schiller, quoted in “Cosmos,” is supported by similar observations of M. de Humboldt himself: “Specific descriptions of nature occur only as accessories, for in Grecian art all things are centered in the sphere of human life.” And, again: “The description of nature in its manifold richness of form, as a distinct branch of poetic literature, was wholly unknown to the Greeks. The landscape appears among them merely as the background of the picture, of which human figures constitute the main subject.” Touches of description must of course occasionally occur, and whenever these are found, the harmony of Grecian taste gives them the highest beauty possible. The many noble similes and comparisons scattered through the greater poems, form admirable detached pictures; but they occupy the attention very briefly; a rapid glance is thrown upon the hill, the river, or the wood, rather for the purpose of affording greater relief to the figures in the foreground than of enduing the sketch of these features of the earth with any charm or importance in itself.

But it is quite impossible to believe for a moment that the Greeks, so fully alive to the spirit of beauty in all its other forms, should have been blind to its effects in the natural world. Other ways of accounting for the apparent inconsistency must be sought for, and the peculiar character and position of the people would seem to suggest these. It was quite consistent with the condition of the world at that early period, and of the Greeks in particular, that nature and art should not then hold the same relative places which they occupy to-day. Art was still in its youth, and of more importance to them than it is to us. Nature, with all her untold wealth, her unharvested magnificence, lay before them, close at hand, always within reach; there was no fear that she should fail them. But human Art was in its earliest stages of culture; every successive step was watched with most lively interest; every progressive movement became of great importance, while the genius of the Greeks particularly led them to feel extreme delight in every achievement of the kind. In fact, all

their highest enjoyments flowed from this source, and into 15this sphere they threw themselves with their whole soul. Whatever susceptibility to the grandeur and beauty of the inanimate creation was felt among them, sought therefore rather to express itself in forms more positive than the voice of song. What, for instance, was the most noble of their temples but the image in Dorian marble of some grand primeval grove, whose gray, columnar trunks they found reflected in the waves of the Ægean Sea? What were the vase, and the vine wreathed about its lip, but the repetition of living forms of fruits and foliage growing in the vale of Tempe, or at the foot of Hymettus? The Greek mind thus beheld the whole external world chiefly through the medium of human Art. An interesting and very striking instance of this peculiarity occurs in the Iliad; no natural object which has a place in the poem—neither the sea nor the skies, neither the streams nor the mountains, all glowing as these were with the purple light of a Grecian atmosphere—could draw from Homer a

description filling half the space allotted by him to the shield of Achilles; nay, more, observe that where rural life and its accessories appear the most distinctly in his verse, it is not the reality which he shows us; we do not ourselves tread the brown soil of the freshly-tilled fallow; we do not pass along the one narrow path in the vineyard, amid the purple clusters, but we are called upon to behold these objects—“sight to be admired of all!”—as they lie curiously graven by the hand of Vulcan on the bronze buckler of the hero, where he

Their very religion was but a work of art, a brilliant web of the human imagination, into which, as on the metal of Vulcan, their poets had wrought

where Olympic deities passed to and fro, with grace and spirit unequaled, but moving ever by the springs of the most common 16of human passions. All the inanimate objects of the visible creation had their allotted places in this gorgeous, imaginative tissue, though still appearing under associations purely human. They had, in short, no conceptions of nature independent of man; to them the whole world was but the shield of Achilles.

With the same mythology, the same philosophy as the Greeks, the Romans are admitted to have been essentially plagiarists. They saw the earth, in this sense, with the eyes of the Greeks. Their literature has even been accused of a greater dearth of poetical observation, as regards the natural world, than that of their predecessors. The practical realities of life engrossed their attention more exclusively. A colossal selfishness was their striking national characteristic—a characteristic which was alike the cause, first, of their political prosperity, and later of their downfall. Rome was their deity; to her daily needs, or interests, or pleasures, all was sacrificed; they cared little for the mountains, and forests, and streams of the earth, provided all the wealth and magnificence of these were brought over Roman ways to swell the triumph of the Forum. It has been remarked that Cæsar could pass the Alps, then comparatively an unknown region, without one allusion to their sublime character. Still, a body of men like the great Latin writers could not, of course, exist

devoid of susceptibility to the beauty of the inanimate world, and many passages may be drawn from their poems bearing witness to this fact. Although, says M. de Humboldt, there is no individual rural portraiture in the Æneid, yet “a deep and intimate comprehension of nature is depicted in soft colors. Where, for instance, has the gentle play of the waves, or the stillness of night, been more happily described?” The modern reader, however, is still left to wonder that poets so great should not have delighted more frequently in enlarging upon similar topics, and that even in many of their elegiac works social life should so exclusively fill up the space.[2] We 17should have rather supposed that when the earth stood in her primitive freshness, in the morning of her existence, her wealth of beauty as yet unsung, that the works of the first great poets would have been filled with the simple reflection of her natural glory. But, as we have seen, such was not the case with the writers of Greece or of Rome; and, as we have already ventured to intimate, it would appear that the

great intellectual activity of those races, connected with the period of time filled by them, where so wide a field opened in every direction, became in itself a prominent cause of this peculiar deficiency of their literature. Whatever admiration they felt for nature expressed itself in positive forms of art, or in an imaginative system of mythology, rather than in song.

But something of a different spirit appears to have actuated the old Asiatic nations. The ancient Indian races, for instance, were more contemplative in character, and more vivid impressions of natural objects are revealed in their writings. The Sanscrit Hymns, and the heroic poems of the same language, are said to contain fine descriptive passages. “The main subject of these writings,” says M. de Humboldt, speaking of the Sanscrit Vedas, “are the veneration and praise of Nature.” A poem, called “The Seasons”—and one starts at the familiar name—with another work, called “The Messenger of the Clouds,” are full, we are told, of the same spirit; they were written by Kalidasa, a cotemporary of Virgil and Horace. It would have given us pleasure to offer the reader a few fragments from writings so ancient and so interesting; one would have liked to compare a passage from the Sanscrit Seasons with those so celebrated and so familiar from our own language and modern time, but no English versions are found within reach. The fact, however, of this

18characteristic of the Sanscrit poems is placed beyond reasonable doubt by the declarations of many distinguished men of learning, more particularly among the German scholars.

The Chinese, that singular people which for ages have separated themselves from the rest of the earth by impassable barriers of prejudice and mystery, are now found—as glimpses are opening into their interior—to have long shown some partiality for natural beauty. Among other poems, touching more or less upon subjects of this kind, they have one bearing the simple name of “The Garden,” which was written by Seema-kuang, a celebrated statesman, some eight or nine centuries since, and which is said to contain agreeable descriptive passages; the sketch of a hermitage among rocks and evergreen woods, and a fine, extensive water view over one of their great rivers, are especially referred to. Lieu-schew, another ancient writer of theirs, dwells at length on the subject of pleasure-grounds, for which he gives admirable directions, in the English style, at a period when a really fine garden was not to be found in all Northern Europe; a short translation from a passage of his will be found in the following selections.[3] Gardening, in fact, appears to have been the

sphere in which Chinese love of nature has especially sought to unfold itself; that perception of beauty of coloring and of nicety of detail, very general among them, shows itself here in perfection; they have long been great florists, and have delighted in writing verses upon particular flowers and fruit-trees. Garden and song were thus closely connected by them; and if one may judge from brief views received through others, their poetry has very frequently indeed something of a horticultural character. Their busy, practical habits and close inspection of detail would easily incline them in this direction; but as yet nothing grand or very elevated has been given to us by translators.

The Hebrew poets stand alone. Their position is absolutely different from that of all profane writers, and places them at a distance from the usual limits of a mere literary 19comparison. They only, as priests and prophets of the One Living God, beheld the natural world in the holy light of truth. Small as was the space the children of Israel filled among the nations of the earth, the humblest individual of their tribes knew that the God of Abraham was the Lord God of Hosts, and that all things visible were but the works of his hands. “The Lord made the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;” they bowed the knee to no one object “in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.” Truth is, of its nature, sublime. No fiction of the human imagination, even in the highest and richest forms which it is capable of assuming, can approach to that majesty which is her inherent prerogative. The views of the earth, open to the children of Israel, had naturally, therefore, a grandeur far beyond what the Greeks, with all

the luxuriance of their florid mythology, could attain to. Of this fact—thanks to the translations of the Sacred Writings in the hands of all who speak the English tongue—any one of us is capable of judging; the extreme excellence of the Psalms, merely in the sense of literary compositions, and independently of the far higher claims they have upon mankind, has never failed to impress itself deeply on all minds open to such perceptions. The nineteenth Psalm, with the unequaled grandeur of its opening verses; the twenty-third, with its pastoral sweetness; the hundred and fourth, with the fullness of its natural pictures; the hundred and seventh; the ninety-sixth; the hundred and forty-fifth; the hundred and forty-eighth, with others of a similar character, will recur to every reader. It is generally admitted that, throughout the range of ancient profane writing, nothing has yet been brought to light which can equal these, or other great passages of the Psalms, of the Pentateuch, the Prophets, or the Book of Job. Even for sweetness, also, the old Hebrew writers were very remarkable.

The most celebrated author and literary artist of modern Germany, and one little likely to have been influenced on such a subject by warmth of religious feeling, has left it as his written opinion that the Book of Ruth, usually 20attributed to the prophet Samuel, is “the loveliest specimen of epic and idyl poetry which we possess.”[4] But the history of Jacob and his family, and the personal story of David in all its details, with other episodes easily pointed out, are almost equally full of this beautiful pastoral spirit. The same inspired pens which have dwelt on the grandest events of which time has any knowledge, have not disdained to move the lesser chords of human sympathies and affections. It was the most honored of the Prophets who so nobly recorded the greatest of all physical facts, the creation of light: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” And on the page immediately following, while still occupied in recording the grand successive stages of the creation, he condescends to note that out of the earth “the Lord God made to grow

every tree that is pleasant to the sight.” This simple phrase, taken in connection with all its sublime relations of time and place, has a gracious tenderness, a compassionate beneficence of detail which moves the heart deeply; all the delight which the trees of the wood have afforded to men, independently of their uses; the many peaceful homes they have overshadowed; the many eyes they have gladdened; all the festal joys of the race in which their branches have waved, seem to crowd the mind in one grateful picture, and force from our lips the familiar invocation, “O all ye green things upon earth, bless ye the Lord; praise him, and magnify him forever.”

The most ancient writings of the world thus afford evidence that in those remote ages the perception of natural beauty was not wanting in the human heart. Different races and individual men may have varied greatly in giving expression to the feeling. David and Homer, the Indian and the Roman, may have sung in very different tones, but wherever intellectual life was at all active, there some strain, at least, from the great Hymn was heard.

But very early, in what may be called Christian literature, this feeling began to receive a fresh impulse and a new direction. On the same soil, and among the same races, where, 21in the height of heathen civilization it had never received adequate expression, both in Italy and in Greece, the eye of the believer was gradually opening to clearer and more worthy views of the creation.

“Look upward,” says St. Chrysostom, “to the vault of heaven, and around thee on the open fields in which herds graze by the water-side; who does not despise all the creations of art, when, in the stillness of his spirit, he watches with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of the earth; when, resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the somber shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far-receding and hazy distance.”

Similar passages may also be gathered from the letters of St. Basil and St. Gregory,[5] fathers of the Greek Church. And still earlier instances of this Christian view of the earth are quoted from the writings of a Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who lived in the beginning of the third century; his evening rambles on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the neighborhood of Ostia, were very feelingly described in pages which have been preserved to our own time. The Christian Church possessed a most rich inheritance in the Hebrew literature; and the constant use of the Psalms of the Temple in her public services would alone suffice to produce in the minds of the people a deep impression of the goodness and majesty of the Divine Creator as revealed in his works. The Canticle of the Three Children, composed before the foundation of Rome, and which from the early ages of Christianity to the present hour has formed a portion of public worship, is an exalted offering of praise with which we are all familiar: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise him