COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library
COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ROMANS. 391 entertained feelings of humane compassion for the enslaved condition of the people, a sentiment which was but seldom, expressed in antiquity. On the estates of the younger Pliny no fetters were used ; and the slave was permitted freely to bequeath, as a cultivator of the soil, that which he had acquired by the labour of his own hands.* No description has been transmitted to us from antiquity of the eternal snow of the Alps, reddened by the evening glow or the morning dawn, of the beauty of the blue ice of the glaciers, or of the sublimity of Swiss natural scenery, although statesmen and generals, with men of letters in their retinue, continually passed through Helvetia on their road to Gaul. All these travellers think only of complaining of the wretchedness of the roads, and never appear to have paid any attention to the romantic beauty of the scenery through which they passed. It is even known that Julius Ca?sar, when he was returning to his legions in Gaul, employed his time whilst he was passing over the Alps in preparing a grammatical work, entitled De Analogia.] Silius Italicus, who died in the time of Trajan, when Switzerland was already considerably culti- vated, describes the region of the Alps as a dreary and' barren wilderness,^: at the same time that he extols with admiration the rocky ravines of Italy, and the woody shores of the Liris (Garigliano). It is also worthy of notice, that the remarkable appearance of the jointed basaltic columns which are so frequently met with, associated in groups, in central France, on the banks of the Rhine, and in Lombardy, should never have been described or even mentioned by Roman writers. At the period when the feelings died away, which had animated classical antiquity, and directed the minds of men to a visible manifestation of human activity, rather than to a passive contemplation of the external world, a new spirit arose ; Christianity gradually diffused itself, and wherever it * Plin., Epist., iii. 19; viii. 16. t Suet., in Julio Ccesare, cap. 56. The lost poem of Caesar (Iter) described the journey to Spain when he led his army to his last military action from Rome to Cordova, by land, (which was accomplished in twenty-four days, according to Suetonius, and in twenty-seven days, according to Strabo and Appian,) when the remnant of Pompey's party, which had been defeated in Africa, had rallied together in Spain. J Sil. Ital., Punica, lib. iii. v. 477. % Sil. Ital., Punica, lib. iy. v. 348; lib. viii. v. 399.
392 COSMOS. was adopted as the religion of the State, it not only exercised a beneficial influence on the condition of the lower classes, by inculcating the social freedom of mankind, but also expanded the views of men in their communion with nature. The eye no longer rested on the forms of Olympic gods. The fathers of the Church, in their rhetorically correct and often poetically imaginative language, now taught that the Creator showed himself great in inanimate no less than in animate nature, and in the wild strife of the elements no less than in the still activity of organic development. At the gradual dissolution of the Roman dominion, creative imagination, simplicity, and purity of diction disappeared from the writings of that dreary age, first in the Latin territories, and then in Grecian Asia Minor. A taste for solitude, for mournful contemplation, and for a moody absorption of mind may be traced simultaneously in the style and colouring of the language. Whenever a new element seems to develope itself in the feelings of mankind, it may almost be traced to the softness invariably an earlier deep-seated individual germ. Thus of Mimnernms* has often been regarded as the expression of a mind. The ancient general sentimental direction of the world is not abruptly separated from the modern, but modifications in the religious sentiments and the tenderest social feelings of men, and changes in the special habits of those who exercise an influence on the ideas of the mass, must give a sudden predominance to that which might previously have escaped attention. It was the tendency of the Christian mind to prove from the order of the universe and the beauty of nature the greatness and goodness of the Creator. This tendency to glorify the Deity in His works, gave rise to a taste for natural description. The earliest and most remarkable instances of this kind are to be met with in the writings of Minucius Felix, a rhetorician and lawyer at Rome, who lived in the beginning of the third century, and was the contemporary of Tertullian and Philostratus. We follow with pleasure the delineation of his twi- light rambles on the shore near Ostia, which he describes as more picturesque and more conducive to health than we find it in the present day. In the religious discourse, entitled * On elegiac poetry, consult Nicol. Bach, in the Ally. Schul-Zeitung, 1829, abth. ii., No. 134, s. 1097.
- Page 1 and 2: COSMOS, VOL. II by ALEXANDER VON HU
- Page 3 and 4: World Public Library The World Publ
- Page 5 and 6: BONN'S STANDARD LIBRARY, _ >. SHERI
- Page 7 and 8: COSMOS: A SKETCH OP A PHYSICAL DESC
- Page 9 and 10: CONTENTS OF VOL. II. PART I. INCITE
- Page 11 and 12: CONTENTS. Vli Page The vast sphere
- Page 13 and 14: CONTENTS. IX Page Polarization and
- Page 15 and 16: [_xii] COSMOS. application of the t
- Page 17 and 18: [_xiv] COSMOS. logy and descriptive
- Page 19 and 20: [xvi] COSMOS. tosthenes of Gyrene.
- Page 21 and 22: [xviii] COSMOS. than the Arabs, and
- Page 23 and 24: [XX] COSMOS. Copernicus never advan
- Page 25 and 26: 370 COSMOS. INCITEMENTS TO THE STUD
- Page 27 and 28: 372 COSMOS. desire to visit the lan
- Page 29 and 30: 374 COSMOS. action, riveted their a
- Page 31 and 32: 376 COSMOS. the stillness of night,
- Page 33 and 34: 378 COSMOS. and fatal passion. Euri
- Page 35 and 36: 380 COSMOS. wooded valley of Tempe,
- Page 37 and 38: S82 COSMOS. That which we miss in t
- Page 39 and 40: 384 cosmos. that account lose any o
- Page 41 and 42: 386 COSMOS. been transmitted to us
- Page 43 and 44: 388 COSMOS. tanian Gaul, the poet h
- Page 45: 390 COSMOS. nature amongst the Roma
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- Page 57 and 58: 402 COSMOS. be gifted with voice, f
- Page 59 and 60: 404 COSMOS. schools constitute one
- Page 61 and 62: 406 COSMOS. Indians, and the marked
- Page 63 and 64: 408 COSM08- poetry have perished. I
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- Page 79 and 80: 424 COSMOS. nature ; thus it is sup
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- Page 85 and 86: 430 COSMOS. treats chiefly of event
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392 <strong>COSMOS</strong>.<br />
was adopted as the religion of the State, it not only exercised<br />
a beneficial influence on the condition of the lower classes, by<br />
inculcating the social freedom of mankind, but also expanded<br />
the views of men in their communion with nature. The<br />
eye no longer rested on the forms of Olympic gods. The<br />
fathers of the Church, in their rhetorically correct and often<br />
poetically imaginative language, now taught<br />
that the Creator<br />
showed himself great in inanimate no less than in animate<br />
nature, and in the wild strife of the elements no less than in<br />
the still activity of organic development. At the gradual dissolution<br />
of the Roman dominion, creative imagination, simplicity,<br />
and purity of diction disappeared from the writings of<br />
that dreary age, first in the Latin territories, and then in<br />
Grecian Asia Minor. A taste for solitude, for mournful contemplation,<br />
and for a moody absorption of mind may be<br />
traced simultaneously in the style and colouring of the<br />
language. Whenever a new element seems to develope<br />
itself in the feelings of mankind, it may almost be traced to<br />
the softness<br />
invariably<br />
an earlier deep-seated individual germ. Thus<br />
of Mimnernms* has often been regarded as<br />
the expression of a<br />
mind. The ancient<br />
general sentimental direction of the<br />
world is not abruptly separated from<br />
the modern, but modifications in the religious sentiments<br />
and the tenderest social<br />
feelings of men, and changes in the<br />
special habits of those who exercise an influence on the ideas<br />
of the mass, must give a sudden predominance to that which<br />
might previously have escaped attention. It was the tendency<br />
of the Christian mind to prove from the order of the<br />
universe and the beauty of nature the greatness and goodness<br />
of the Creator. This tendency to glorify the Deity in His<br />
works, gave rise to a taste for natural description. The<br />
earliest and most remarkable instances of this kind are to be<br />
met with in the writings of Minucius Felix, a rhetorician and<br />
lawyer at Rome, who lived in the beginning of the third<br />
century, and was the contemporary of Tertullian and Philostratus.<br />
We follow with pleasure the delineation of his twi-<br />
light rambles on the shore near Ostia, which he describes as<br />
more picturesque and more conducive to health than we find<br />
it in the present day. In the religious discourse, entitled<br />
* On elegiac poetry, consult Nicol. Bach, in the Ally. Schul-Zeitung,<br />
1829, abth. ii., No. 134, s. 1097.