PUBLIC LIBRARI 213137 ASTOR, LENOX AND ATIONS. 1900. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by JAMES J. WOOLSEY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PRINTED BY Edward O. Jenkins, 20 Frankfort St. N. Y. THE CHRISTIAN REVIEW. NỌ. LXXXIII.—JANUARY, 1856. THE ESTHETIC INFLUENCE OF NATURE. The Soul in Nature; with Supplementary Contributions. By HANS CHRISTIAN OERSTED. London: Henry G. Bohn. 1852. THE aspects of a country always impress themselves upon the soul of man, and awaken both his reason and his imagination. His reason is awakened by the observation of the relations and the changes in matter which indicate the operation of different forces. The super-position and the other relations of the strata of the earth's crust, suggest to the mind interesting problems as to the genetic origin of the earth, the solution of which constitutes geology. The vast multitude of stars scattered in such varying groups throughout illimitable space, and presenting such different combinations and appearances; and the motions of the solar system in the dif ferent orbits, and the eccentric wanderings of the comets: all appeal to the inquiring mind and present to it complicated problems which promote the development of mathematical thought, and result in the sublime generalizations and deductions of astronomy. The manifold differences and resemblances in the vegetable kingdom interest the mind, and excite a desire to conquer the diversities and bring them into the unity of a system; and thus the science of botany is built up. The unceasing mutations of combination and decomposition, ever taking place in the material of the telluric world, present to the reason those phenomena which classified and resolved make up the science of chemistry. And so every portion of the material world is constantly presenting to the mind of man problems of thought which it is his greatest delight and his noblest employment to solve; thus developing within him powers of reason of which he would otherwise be altogether unconscious. Just as the contemplation of the agencies, which are employed by nature in producing the transformations of matter, developes the reason of man, so does the contemplation of the beautiful forms, which cover the surface of the earth, awaken his imagination. The beautiful scenery of nature impresses us with the sense of an unseen spirituality, and the imagination, kindled by the inspiration which breathes from the forms of beauty, weaves the poet's dream and gives to nature the charms of fancy. And the man of science, after he has traced with laborious steps the mysterious forces by which the earth is formed, dwells in imaginative contemplation on the scenes of beauty spread out upon its surface. The most impressive book which has been given to science in this age, is the fruits of the impressions made upon the mind of the author by the peculiar aspects of the earth at the spot where he was born. The Foot-prints of the Creator would never have been written, if Hugh Miller had not been born on the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. The profound scientific reasonings of that book were suggested by the facts written on the stones; and the exquisite delineations of scenery with which here and there the argument is adorned, were impressed upon the imagination of the author by the beauty of the locality where his young eyes first beheld the charms of nature. And no man is more fully aware of the influence which particular localities exert on the mind, giving direction to the thoughts, than Mr. Miller himself. In the dedication of his first work on geology, The Old Red Sandstone, to Sir Roderick Murchison, the author of the Silurian System, he says: "Smith, the father of English geology, loved to remark that he had been born upon the Oolite-the formation whose various deposits he was the first to distinguish and describe, and from which, as from a meridian line of the geographer, the geological scale has been graduated on both |