Sometimes the beautiful scenery of nature, which the agonized sufferers had seen on earth, is retraced by memory, to give a new woe to their exceeding torments.

"One drop of water now, alas! I crave.

The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes

Of Castino, making fresh and soft

The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,

Stand ever in my view."

Thus the beauties of nature and the terrors of nature are both depicted, to give a transcendant horror to the amplitude of woe spread out all around.

Descriptions of natural scenery occur much oftener in the Purgatory than in either of the other parts of the poem. In the opening of the twenty-eighth canto, the forest of the terrestrial Paradise is described.

"A pleasant air

That intermitted never, never veered,
Smote on my temples, gently as a wind
Of softest influence: at which the sprays,
Obedient all, leaned trembling to that part
Where first the holy mountain casts his shade;
Yet were not so disordered but that still

Upon their tops the feathered choristers
Applied their wonted art, and with full joy

Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill

Amid leaves that to their jocund lays

Kept tenor; even as from branch to branch

Along piny forests on the shore

Of Chiasi rolls the gathering melody

When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed

The dripping South.",

In the Paradise there is but little natural imagery. In the thirtieth canto, however, from the beginning to the close, there is much beautiful description. A river of light is described as flowing through the scene.

"I looked,

And in likeness of a river I saw

Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves

Flashed up effulgence, as they glided on

"Twixt banks on either side painted with Spring,
Incredible how fair; and, from the tide,
There ever and anon, outstarting, flew
Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers
Did set them, like rubies chased with gold:
Then, as if drunk with odors, plunged again
Into the wondrous flood; from which, as one
Re-entered, still another rose."

In Italian literature, Petrarch, next after Dante, claims our attention. From his earliest childhood he manifested extra

ordinary sensibility to the charms of nature. When a boy, he went with a party to see the beautiful valley of Vaucluse. As soon as he beheld the landscape, he exclaimed: "Here, now, is a retirement suited to my taste, and preferable, in my eyes, to the greatest and most splendid cities." It might have been anticipated that one charmed by nature at so early an age would show it in whatever of imaginative thought he might give to the world. But such an anticipation has not been realized. Like many men of exalted imaginative sympathy, he was, at an early age, brought under the spell of that sentiment which often rules the most finely fashioned minds with uncontrollable sway. In the church of St. Clara, in the city of Avignon, Petrarch for the first time saw Laura, dressed "in a green mantle, sprinkled with violets, on which her golden hair fell plaited in tresses." She made an instant impression upon his heart, which cast over his whole subsequent life the disastrous gloom of a hopeless love. His mind was thus turned, at an early period, from the sensuous to the emotional world. His poetry was circumscribed in its range, because of the fixed gaze of his poetic eye upon the idol who ever sat enthroned in the hori zon of his imagination. We therefore meet in his poetry but little evidence of sympathy with nature. But his life shows that he retained to the last the deepest sensibility to nature. He spent many years in the solitude of the beautiful valley of Vaucluse, to assuage, by the gentle influences. of its exquisite scenery, the sadness of his hopeless love. In his letters from this rural seclusion he often speaks of his pleasures amidst the scenery. And, in his frequent visits to

different countries, he noted with delight the aspects of nature. In a letter from Naples, to Cardinal Colonna, he gives a description of the scenery about Baix that shows how it impressed his imagination.

"I was rejoiced," says he, "to behold places described by Virgil, and, what is more surprising, by Homer before him. I have seen the Lucerne Lake, famous for its fine oysters; the Lake Avernus, with waters as black as pitch, and fishes of the same color swimming in it; marshes formed by the standing waters of Acheron, and the mountain whose roots go down to hell. The terrible aspect of this place, the thick shades with which it is covered by a surrounding wood, and the pestilent odor which this water exhales, characterize it very justly as the Tartarus of the poets. There wants only the boat of Charon, which, however, would be unnecessary, as there is only a shallow ford to pass over. The Styx and the kingdom of Pluto are now hid from our sight. Awed by what I had heard and read of these mournful approaches to the dead, I was contented to view them at my feet from the top of a high mountain. The laborer, the shepherd, and the sailor dare not approach them nearer.

"I have seen the ruins of the grotto of the famous Cumaan Sybil; it is a hideous rock suspended in the Avernian Lake. Its situation strikes the mind with horror. There still remain the hundred mouths by which the gods conveyed their oracles; these are now dumb, and there is only one God, who speaks in heaven and on earth. These uninhabited ruins serve as the resort of birds of unlucky omen. Not far off is that dreadful cavern which leads, it is said, to the infernal regions."

In all ages natural scenery like this has impressed man with notions of infernal regions. And the poets have always borrowed from such scenery their descriptions of the place of future torments. Sir R. Murchison, on a geological visit to the boracic lakes of Tuscany, was so impressed by the dolorous mutterings of the subterranean vapors bursting upwards from the burning depths, that he said, in his account of the scene: "If the intensely hot vapor-gusts which have issued for centuries from cavities in the rocks of the Tuscan Maremma had been as well known to Dante as they were to Targioni Tozzetti, their graphic describer in the last century, the great poet would surely have selected them as a finer illustration of infernal agency than the feeble 'bullicami of Viterbo.'" The Tuscans have always associated these lakes with the infernal regions.

Just as horrid scenery impresses the mind with thoughts of

hell, so does beautiful scenery impress it with sentiments of heaven. All are acquainted, by hearsay at least, with Loch Lomond, the beautiful lake of Scotland. The devoted missionary, John M'Donald, wrote in his diary, which has been published: "I took an opportunity of visiting Loch Lomond, and was exceedingly delighted. O, how sweet and tranquil was the bosom of the lake! I thought of the peace of God, that passeth understanding." Many an imaginative visitor has made a similar exclamation.

Thus it is that the scenery of nature, in its different aspects, impresses man with sentiments that correspond with those religious doctrines on which his destiny hangs. It stirs his soul to its inmost depths. The horrors which it awakens, leads his imagination on to the dolorous regions of a future world of woe; and the joyous apirations which lovely scenes inspire, lead the imagination to scenes of surpassing beauty in a future world. The poetry of woe and the poetry of joy, may thus find their inspiration in the scenery of Nature.

We now approach the age of physical discovery--the age when those vast maritime enterprises brought the knowledge of the whole earth, and the exploration of the celestial spaces brought the knowledge of the whole heavens, before the eye of man-the age of Columbus and of Copernicus. These two great men were endowed with the very highest imaginative sympathy. They both looked, with the eye of the poet, no less than of the geographer and the astronomer, over the vast fields of their discoveries. The old mariner was stirred to his inmost soul by the beauty of the new countries which he discovered.

"The beauty of the new land (says he) far surpasses the Campina de Cordova. The trees are bright with an ever-verdant foliage, and are always laden with fruit. The plants on the ground are high and flowering. The air is warm as that of April in Castile, and the nightingale sings more melodiously than words can describe. At night the song of other smaller birds resounds sweetly, and I have also heard our grasshoppers and frogs. Once I came to a deeply enclosed harbor, and saw a high mountain that had never been seen by any mortal eye, and from whence gentle waters flowed down. The mountain was covered with firs, and variously-formed trees, adorned with beautiful blossoms. On sailing up the stream, which empties itself into the bay, I was astonished

at the cool shade, the clear crystal-like water, and the number of the singing birds. I felt as if I could never leave so charming a spot, as if a thousand tongues would fail to describe all these things, and as if my hand were spell-bound and refused to write."

This seems but little like the journal of an old seaman, who had been weather-beaten on many an untravelled track of the ocean. Though it was the thirst for gold and for the riches of commerce, which, to a great extent, led to the prosecution of distant voyages at this period, yet the spirit of adventure and the pleasures of the imagination fired the souls of the great navigators, Columbus, Cabot, and Gama. Theirs was the heroism of maritime life. No mere pecuniary profits were the rewards after which they aspired. But Columbus rose above them all in the plenitude of mind. He was one of the most accurate and discerning observers known to the history of physical discovery; and his warm imaginative sympathy enabled him to depict the objects and the scenery of nature with the pen of a master.

And it was with no cold eye of reason that Copernicus surveyed the heavens. In his system of a central sun, he beheld not only order but beauty.

"By no other arrangement (he exclaimed) have I been able to find so admirable a symmetry of the universe, and so harmonious a connection of orbits, as by placing the lamp of the world, the sun, in the midst of the beautiful temple of nature as a kingly throne, ruling the whole family of circling stars that revolve around him."

It was thus with the imaginative sympathy of a poet, that Copernicus contemplated the heavens embraced in the system that his reason had discovered.

Contemporary with Columbus, lived his friend, Leonardi da Vinci, a man at once a great philosopher, scientist, and artist. Reason and imagination both in so exalted a degree were given to him, that it is hard to say, whether philosophy, science, or art was his proper sphere; as he rose above the greatest men in all. He is excelled only by Bacon in the insight into the nature and importance of induction in physical inquiry, and only by Michael Angelo in genius for art. And Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Titian were also