It was about the time when those medieval churches were rising from the towns of central Europe-slow in their stately growth as the forest whence their forms were drawn-that Troubadour and Trouvère, Minstrel and Minnesinger, began their wanderings in the same region; and amid the strange medley of human passion and religious superstition to which they gave utterance, some strains of great natural sweetness were heard. It was then that the returning cuckoo was greeted in England with song:

"Sumer is ycumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!"

It was then that merle and mavis, nightingale and lark, were saluted with responsive music by the listening poet; it was then that daisy and lily, la douce Marguerite and the Flower of Light, were so fondly cherished and so highly honored; it was then that the May-pole was raised in the castle court and on the village green, and that high and low, like Arcite, hurried a-field on May-day morning "for to fetch some grene." It was then, in short, that the blossoms and the fowls of Europe were first sung in the modern dialects of the people.

Those old wandering minstrels, troubadour and minnesinger, were, in fact, the heralds of reviving letters; they struck the first sparks of national, indigenous literary feeling in its modern forms. It was from them that Petrarch and Dante learned to speak the language of the living, rather than that of the dead. It was from their example that those great poets took, what was then a very daring step, and, rejecting the Latin, chose their native language as a medium of compositions of the highest order. How they succeeded, the whole world knows; and among the writings of those great Italian masters there are very beautiful descriptive passages, a few of which, in the form of translations, may be found in the later pages of this volume.*

Fortunately for all who speak the English tongue, Chau

*See Parts XXIX. and XXX.

cer, "the morning star" of British verse, as he has been hailed by Denham, followed in the track of the Italian poets; the fountains of his inspiration flowed fresh and full from his native soil. How keenly alive was he to every detail of natural beauty in the green fields of England; to the sweetness and freshness of the opening daisy; of the growing grass; of the unfolding leaf, with its "glad, light green!" He was followed by others with the same happy instincts, and a love' of nature was thus infused into the earliest literature of our language. All the great poets of the sixteenth, and those of the best years of the seventeenth centuries, were more or less under the influence of this spirit-Shakspeare, Jonson, Spenser, Drayton, the Fletchers, Milton, Cowley, Denham, Dryden, Walker, Herbert, Herrick. How long is the noble roll of names of that period, who have all contributed something to our wealth in this way! There came a moment, however, when a colder and more artificial style acquired in England the same influence which long proved so paralyzing in France, when poets were content to copy those who had preceded them; when they trod the London pavement and the coffeehouse floors much more frequently than the narrow paths about the fields. Mr. Wordsworth has remarked, that during a period of sixty years, between the publication of "Paradise. Lost" and that of the "Seasons," all the poetry of England, with the exception of a passage or two, does not contain “a single new image of external nature.” Poets were courtiers in those times, or they aimed at becoming so; they prided themselves upon a neatly turned compliment, upon a farfetched dedication; they were wits—they were pretty fellows about town; like Horace Walpole's lively old friend, Madame du Deffand, they could very conscientiously avow, "Je n'aime pas les plaisirs innocents !”

Mr. Wordsworth dates the dawn of the modern era in poetry from the appearance of the "Seasons," which were first published in the year 1726. A single great work will no doubt often produce surprisingly general effects in the literary world, when the atmosphere is prepared for it. And such

was the case when Thomson wrote. Many different influences were gradually combining to work out the same result. A high degree of general education, in connection with the prevalence of Christian religious truth, must always naturally dispose the mind to a more just appreciation of the works of the Deity, as compared with the works of man. The wider our views of each, the higher will be our admiration of the first. We say general civilization, however; for where the advantages of education are confined to a small class, that class will usually be found only in the large towns of a country, and its tastes and habits will therefore necessarily be more or less artificial. The rustic population, in such a state of things, will be rude, coarse, and deemed only fit for ridicule and burlesque. The poet of such a period has no sooner tried his strength, than he is eager to turn his back on the fields; he hurries "to town," to the center of all enlightenment, and soon becomes metamorphosed into a cockney or a courtier. In their day Paris and London have probably thus swallowed up many a man of genius, country born and country bred, who, had he remained in his native haunts, could never have failed in real honest feeling for that natural beauty which, like the mercy of God, is new every morning. Had Cowper lived all his days in Bond Street he never could have written the "Task." Conceive a man like Crabbe, or Burns, transported for life to Grub Street, and imagine what would be the inevitable effects of the change on a spirit like theirs. But a general diffusion of civilization produces an entirely different state of things. An intellectual man may now live most of his days in the country without disgrace and without annoyance. He may read and he may write there with pleasure and with impunity. A wide horizon for observation opens about him to-day in the fields, as elsewhere. Science, commerce, painting, sculpture, horticulture -all the higher arts, in fact-are so many noble laborers hourly toiling for his benefit, as well as for that of the townsman. General education is also daily enlarging the public audience, and thus giving more healthful play to diversity of

tastes. No single literary class is likely, in such a state of things, to usurp undue authority over others—to ‘impose academical fetters on even the humblest of its cotemporaries. Whatever is really natural and really worthy, may therefore hope in the end for a share of success. But we conceive

that it would still be possible for all these circumstances to unite in favoring the literature of the age, without leading it into those views of the natural world which have so decidedly marked its course in our own day, without producing at least results so striking, a change so marked. It is, we believe, the union of Christianity with this general diffusion of a high degree of civilization which has led us to a more deeply felt appreciation of the works of the creation. It has always been from lands blessed with the light of revealed truth that the choir of praise has risen with the greatest fullness. And it would be easy, also, to prove that those individual writers who have sung the natural beauty of the earth with the greatest fervor of feeling and truth of description have been more or less actuated by a religious spirit. Take as examples the poets of our own language; how many of those who have touched upon similar subjects were moved by what may be called Christian impulses? Go back as far even as Chaucer and Dunbar, Shakspeare and Spenser, Milton and Fletcher; if these were not all what is called religious men, yet the writings of even Chaucer and Shakspeare, though tainted with the grossness of their times, were the works of believing Christian hearts. If we look nearer to our own day, from the period of Thomson and Dyer to the present hour, the fact is self-evident, and needs no repetition of names. There have been instances, no doubt, among the greater English poets of the last fifty years, where success in natural description has been combined with an avowed or implied religious skepticism. But no man can be born and bred in a Christian community, taught in its schools, governed by its laws, educated by its literature, without unconsciously, and, as it were, in spite of himself, imbibing many influences of the prevailing faith. Even the greatest English poets of

the skeptical school are forced to resort to what appears to the reader a combination of an imperfect, enfeebled Christianity with an incomplete and lifeless Paganism. Their views of the material world almost invariably assume a Greek aspect; and we must adhere to the opinion, that, in spite of their florid character, their grace of outline, their richness of detail, these fall unspeakably, immeasurably short of the grandeur, the healthful purity, the living beauty, the power and tenderness of feeling which belong to revealed truth. With the Greek, as with so many others, man was, more or less palpably, the great center of all. Not so with the Christian; while Revelation allots to him a position elevated and ennobling, she also reads him the lowliest lessons. No system connects man by more close and endearing ties, with the earth and all its holds, than Christianity, which leaves nothing to chance, nothing to that most gloomy and most impossible of chimeras, fate, but refers all to Providence, to the omniscient wisdom of a God who is love; but at the same time she warns him that he is himself but the steward and priest of the Almighty Father, responsible for the use of every gift; she plainly proclaims the fact, that even here on earth, within his own domains; his position is subordinate. The highest relation of every created object is that which connects it with its Maker: "For thy pleasure they are, and were created!" This sublime truth Christianity proclaims to us, and there is breadth enough in this single point to make up much of the wide difference between the Christian and the heathen poet. And which of these two views is the most ennobling, each of us may easily decide for himself. Look at the simple flower of the field; behold it blooming at the gracious call of the Almighty, beaming with the light of heavenly mercy, fragrant with the holy blessing, and say if it be not thus more noble to the eye of reason, dearer to the heart, than when fancy dyed its petals with the blood of a fabled Adonis or Hyacinthus ? Go out and climb the highest of all the Alps, or stand beside the trackless, ever-moving sea or look over the broad, unpeopled prairie, and tell us whence