NOTES

The caresses of the charming breezes.She light, clear, flattering sea.Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves andlives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.'Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.'Beauty, that 'which is one and all.'

The caresses of the charming breezes.

She light, clear, flattering sea.

Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves andlives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.

Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves and

lives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.

Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.'

Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.'

Beauty, that 'which is one and all.'

He describes his love in a mystical form:

We were but one flower, and our souls lived in each other as flowers do, when they love and hide their joy within a closed calyx.... The clear starry night had now become my element, for the beautiful life of my love grew in the stillness as in the depths of earth gold grows mysteriously.

He delights 'thus to drink the joy of the world out of one cup with the lady of his love.'

'Yea, man is a sun, seeing all and transfiguring all when he loves; and when he does not love, he is like a dark dwelling in which a little smelly lamp is burning.' All this is soft and feminine, but it has real poetic charm.

Beautiful too, though sad and gloomy, is hisSong of Fate:

Nowhere may man abide,But painfully from hour to hourHe stumbles blindly on to the unknown,As water falls from rock to rockThe long year through.

Nowhere may man abide,

But painfully from hour to hour

He stumbles blindly on to the unknown,

As water falls from rock to rock

The long year through.

His pantheism finds expression in the odes--inTo Nature, for instance:

Since my heart turneth upward to the sunAs one that hears her voice,Hailing the stars as brothers, and the springAs melody divine;Since in the breath that stirs the wood thy soul,The soul of joy, doth moveOn the still waters of my heart--therefore,O Nature! these are golden days to me!

Since my heart turneth upward to the sun

As one that hears her voice,

Hailing the stars as brothers, and the spring

As melody divine;

Since in the breath that stirs the wood thy soul,

The soul of joy, doth move

On the still waters of my heart--therefore,

O Nature! these are golden days to me!

Tieck, too, was keenly alive to Nature. Spring[19]:

Look all around thee how the spring advances!New life is playing through the gay green trees!See how in yonder bower the light leaf dancesTo the bird's tread and to the quivering breeze!How every blossom in the sunlight glances!The winter frost to his dark cavern flees,And earth, warm wakened, feels through every veinThe kindling influence of the vernal rain.Now silvery streamlets, from the mountain stealing,Dance joyously the verdant vales along;Cold fear no more the songster's tongue is sealing,Down in the thick dark grove is heard his song.And all their bright and lovely hues revealing,A thousand plants the field and forest throng;Light comes upon the earth in radiant showers,And mingling rainbows play among the flowers.

Look all around thee how the spring advances!

New life is playing through the gay green trees!

See how in yonder bower the light leaf dances

To the bird's tread and to the quivering breeze!

How every blossom in the sunlight glances!

The winter frost to his dark cavern flees,

And earth, warm wakened, feels through every vein

The kindling influence of the vernal rain.

Now silvery streamlets, from the mountain stealing,

Dance joyously the verdant vales along;

Cold fear no more the songster's tongue is sealing,

Down in the thick dark grove is heard his song.

And all their bright and lovely hues revealing,

A thousand plants the field and forest throng;

Light comes upon the earth in radiant showers,

And mingling rainbows play among the flowers.

All his writings seem intoxicated with Nature. The hero of his novelWilliam Lovell, scamp though he is, a man of criminal egotism whose only law is licence, is deeply in love with Nature.

He wrote from Florence:

Nature refreshes my soul with her endless beauty. I am often full of enthusiasm at the thousand charms of Nature and Art ... at last my longing to travel to wonderful distant places is satisfied. Even as a child, when I stood outside my father's country-house, and gazed at the distant mountains and discovered a windmill on the very line of the horizon, it seemed to beckon me as it turned, my blood pulsed more quickly, my mind flew to distant regions, a strange longing often filled my eyes with tears.Often it seems to me as if the enigma in ourselves were about to be unriddled, as if we were suddenly to see the transformation of all our feelings and strange experiences. Night surrounded me with a hundred terrors, the transparent moonlight sky was like a crystal dome overhead--in this world the most unusual feelings were as shadows.

Often it seems to me as if the enigma in ourselves were about to be unriddled, as if we were suddenly to see the transformation of all our feelings and strange experiences. Night surrounded me with a hundred terrors, the transparent moonlight sky was like a crystal dome overhead--in this world the most unusual feelings were as shadows.

'Franz Sternbald' had the same intoxicated feeling for Nature:

I should like to fill the whole world with songs of love, to move moonrise and sunrise to echo back my joys and sorrows; and trees, twigs, leaves, grasses to catch the melody and all repeat my music with a thousand tongues.[20]

To the Romantic School, Music and Nature were a passion; they longed to resolve all their feelings, like Byron, at one flash, into music. 'For thought is too distant.' Night and the forest, moonlight and starlight, were in all their songs.

There is a background of landscape all throughFranz Sternbald's Wanderings.

In the novels of the eighteenth century landscape had had no place; Hermes once gave a few lines to sunset, but excused it as an extravagance, and begged readers and critics not to think that he only wanted to fill up the page.

Rousseau altered this; Sophie la Roche, in herFreundschaftlichen Frauenzimmerbriefen, introduced ruins, moonlight scenery, hills, vales, and flowering hedges, etc., into scenes of thought and feeling; and most of all, Goethe inWerthertunes scenery and soul to one key. In his later romances he avoided descriptions of scenery. Jean Paul, like Tieck inFranz Sternbald, never spares us one sunset or sunrise. Some of Tieck's concise descriptions are very telling, like Theodore Storm's at the present day:

Rosy light quivered on the blades of grass, and morning moved in waves along them.The redder the evening grew, the heavier became his dreams; the darkened trees, the shadows lengtheningacross the fields, the smoke from the roofs of a little village, and the stars coming into view one by one in the sky--all this moved him deeply, moved him to a wistful compassion for himself.

Rosy light quivered on the blades of grass, and morning moved in waves along them.

The redder the evening grew, the heavier became his dreams; the darkened trees, the shadows lengtheningacross the fields, the smoke from the roofs of a little village, and the stars coming into view one by one in the sky--all this moved him deeply, moved him to a wistful compassion for himself.

As Franz wanders about the wood:

He observes the trees reflected in a neighbouring pond. He had never looked at landscape with this pleasure, it had never been given to him to discern the various colours and their shadows, the charm of the stillness, the effect of the foliage, as now in the clear water. Till now he had never drawn a landscape, only looked at it as a necessary adjunct to many historical pictures, had never felt that lifeless Nature could herself compose something whole and complete in itself, and so worthy to be represented.

Tieck's shorter stories, fairy tales and others, shew taste for the mysterious and indefinite aspects of Nature--reflections in water, rays of light, cloud forms:

They became to him the most fitting characters in which to record that indefinite inexpressible feeling which gave its special colour to his spiritual life.[21]

The pantheism of Boehme, with whom he was closely associated, always attracted him, and in Jena he came under the influence of Steffens, and also of Schelling, whose philosophy of Nature called Nature a mysterious poem, a dreaming mind. This mind it became the chief aim of Novalis, as well as Tieck, to decipher.

From simple descriptions of Nature he went on to read mystic meanings into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and mystically in his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between natural phenomena and elementary human feeling.Blond Egbertwas the earliest example of this:

Night looked sullenly through the windows, and the trees without rustled in the wet cold ... the moon looked fitfully through breaks in the driving clouds.[22]

In the same book Bertha describes the horror ofloneliness, the vague longings, and then the overwhelming delight in new impressions, which seized her when she fled from home as a child and lost herself among the mountains.

The Runenberggives in a very powerful way the idea of the weird fascination which the subterranean powers were supposed to exert over men, alluring and befooling them, and rousing their thirst for gold.

The demoniacal elements in mountain scenery, its crags and abysses, are contrasted with idyllic plains. The tale is sprinkled over with descriptions of Nature, which give it a fairy-like effect.[23]

The most extraordinary product of this School was Novalis. With him everything resolved itself into presentiment, twilight, night, into vague longings for a vague distant goal, which he expressed by the search for 'the blue flower.' This is fromHeinrich von Ofterdingen:

'The cheerful pageant of the glorious evening rocked him in soft imaginings; the flower of his heart was visible now and then as by sheet lightning.' He looked at Nature with the mystic's eye, and described her fantastically:

I am never tired of looking minutely at the different plants. Growing plants are the direct language of the earth; each new leaf, each remarkable flower, is a mystery which projects itself, and because it cannot move with love and longing, nor attain to words, is a dumb, quiet plant. When in solitude one finds such a flower, does it not seem as if all around it were brightened, and, best of all, do not the little feathered notes around it remain near? One could weep for joy, and there, far from the world, stick hands and feet into the earth, to take root, and never more leave so delightful a spot. This green mysterious carpet of love is drawn over the whole earth.

It is not surprising that night should attract this unnaturally excited imagination most of all:

Sacred, inexpressible, mysterious Night, deliciousbalsam drops from thy hands, from the poppy sheaf; thou upliftest the heavy wings of the Spirit.[24]

Night and death are delight and bliss.

The fairy-like tale ofHyacinth and Little Rose,with its charming personifications, is refreshing after all this:

The violet told the strawberry in confidence, she told her friend the gooseberry, who never ceased to jeer when Hyacinth went, so the whole garden and wood soon knew it, and when Hyacinth went out, voices from all sides cried out, 'Little Rose is my favourite.' When he goes into the wide world to find the land of Isis, he asks the way of the animals, and of springs, rocks, and trees, and the flowers smile at him, the springs offer him a fresh drink, and there is wonderful music when he comes home. 'O that men could understand the music of Nature!' cries the listener in the tale. Then follows a description of 'the sweet passion for the being of Nature and her enchanting raptures,' and the charm of the poetic imagination which finds 'a great sympathy with man's heart' in all the external world. For example, in the breath of wind, which 'with a thousand dark and dolorous notes seems to dissolve one's quiet grief into one deep melodious sigh of all Nature.''And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?' And in ecstasy the youth exclaims: 'Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he feels Nature's innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful feeling, for which language has no other name than love and bliss, spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks, palpitating, on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor self is lost in the overwhelming waves of joy?'[25]

'And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?' And in ecstasy the youth exclaims: 'Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he feels Nature's innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful feeling, for which language has no other name than love and bliss, spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks, palpitating, on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor self is lost in the overwhelming waves of joy?'[25]

Here we have the key to the romantic feeling for Nature--communion of the soul with Nature in a twilight mood of dreamy absorption.

Yet amidst all this, real delight in romantic scenery was not quite lacking: witness Hulsen's[26]Observations on Nature on a Journey through Switzerland; and the genuine lyric of Nature, untainted by mystic and sickly influences, was still to be heard,as in Eichendorff's beautiful songs and hisTautgenichts.

The Romantic School, in fact, far as it erred from the path, did enlarge the life of feeling generally, and with that, feeling for Nature, and modern literature is still bound to it by a thousand threads.

Our modern rapture has thus been reached by a path which, with many deviations in its course, has come to us from a remote past, and is still carrying us farther forward.

Its present intensity is due to the growth of science, for although feeling has become more realistic and matter-of-fact in these days of electricity and the microscope, love for Nature has increased with knowledge. Science has even become the investigator of religion, and the pantheistic tendency of the great poets has passed into us, either in the idea of an all-present God, or in that of organic force working through matter--the indestructible active principle of life in the region of the visible. Our explorers combine enthusiasm for Nature with their tireless search for truth--for example, Humboldt, Haeckel, and Paul Güssfeldt; and though, as the shadow side to this light, travelling and admiration of Nature have become a fashion, yet who nowadays can watch a great sunset or a storm over the sea, and remain insensible to the impression?

Landscape painting and poetry shew the same deviations from the straight line of development as in earlier times. Our garden craft, like our architecture, is eclectic; but the English park style is still the most adequate expression of prevalent taste: spaces of turf with tree groups, a view over land or sea, gradual change from garden to field; to which has been added a wider cultivation of foreign plants. In landscape painting the zigzag course is very marked: landscapes such as Bocklin's,entirely projected by the imagination and corresponding to nothing on earth, hang together in our galleries with the most faithful studies from Nature. It is the same with literature. In fiction, novels which perpetuate the sentimental rhapsodies of an early period, and open their chapters with forced descriptions of landscape, stand side by side with the masterly work of great writers--for example, Spielhagen, Wilhelmine von Hillern, and Theodore Storm.

In poetry, the lyric of Nature is inexhaustible. Heine, the greatest lyrist after Goethe, though his poetry has, like the Nixie, an enchantingly fair body with a fish's tail, wrote in theTravels in the Harz: 'How infinitely blissful is the feeling when the outer world of phenomena blends and harmonizes with the inner world of feeling; when green trees, thoughts, birds' songs, sweet melancholy, the azure of heaven, memory, and the perfume of flowers, run together and form the loveliest of arabesques.'

But his delight in Nature was spoilt by irony and straining after effect--for example, inThe Fig Tree; and althoughThe Lotos Floweris a gem, and theNorth Sea Picturesshew the fine eye of a poet who, like Byron and Shelley, can create myths, his personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect.

Every element of Nature has found skilled interpreters both in poetry and painting, and technical facility and truth of representation now stand on one level with the appreciation of her charms.

1:Kritische Gänge. Comp. Vischer,Ueber den optischen Formsinn,and Carl du Prel,Psychologie der Lyrik.

2: As in elegyGhatarkarparam.

3: Comp. Humboldt,Cosmos. Schnaase,Geschichte der bildenden Künste.

4: SeeDie Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern, Biese.

1: Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque nominibus adpellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident, Tac. Germ. Comp. Grimm,Deutsche Mythologie.

2: Grimm. Simrock,Handbuch der Mythologie.

3: Grimm.

4: Grimm.

5: Grimm.

6:Geschichte der bildenden Künste. Comp. Grimm,Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer.

7: Grimm.

8: Carrière,Die Poesie.

1: Clement of Rome, iCor.19, 20. Zoeckler,Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft.

2: Comp.Vita S. Basilii.

3:Basilii opera omnia. Parisus, 1730.

4:Cosmos.

5: Biese,Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern.

6:Mélanges philosophiques, historiques, et littéraires.

7:Homily4.

8:Homily6.

9: Biese,Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern.

'In spring the Cydmian apple trees give blossom watered by river streams in the hallowed garden of the nymphs; in spring the buds grow and swell beneath the leafy shadow of the vine branch. But my heart knoweth no season of respite; nay, like the Thracian blast that rageth with its lightning, so doth it bear down from Aphrodite's side, dark and fearless, with scorching frenzy in its train, and from its depths shaketh my heart with might.'

10: Comp. Biese,op. cit.

11:Deutsche Rundschau, 1879.

12: Comp. Biese,op. cit.

13: Chrysostom was not only utilitarian, but praised and enjoyed the world's beauty. From the fifth to third century, Greek progress in feeling for Nature can be traced from unconscious to conscious pleasure in her beauty.

14:De Mortalitate, cap. 4.

15:Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur.

16: When one thinks of Sappho, Simonides, Theocritus, Meleager, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace, it cannot be denied that this is true of Greek and Roman lyric.

17: As in the Homeric time, when each sphere of Nature was held to be subject to and under the influence of its special deity. But it cannot be admitted that metaphor was freer and bolder in the hymns; on the contrary, it was very limited and monotonous.

18: InCathemerinon.

19: Comp. fragrant gardens of Paradise, Hymn 3.

In Hamartigenia he says that the evil and ugly in Nature originates in the devil.

20: Ebert.

21: The Robinsonade of the hermit Bonosus upon a rocky island is interesting.

22: Comp. Biese,op. cit.

23: Comp.ad Paulinum, epist. 19,Monum. German.v. 2.

24:Carm. nat. 7.

25:Ep.xi.

26:Migne Patrol60.

27:Migne Patrol59.

28: Ebert.

29: Comp. Biese,op. cit.

30: Comp. Biese,op. cit.

31:Migne Patrol58.

32:Carm.lib. i.

33:Amoenitas loci: Variorum libri Lugduni, 1677.

34:Monum. Germ., 4th ed., Leo, lib. viii.

35:Deutsche Rundschau, 1882.

36:Monum. German Histor., poet. lat. medii ævi, I. Berlin 1881, ed. Dümmler. Alcuin,Carmen23.

37: Zoeckler,Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft. 'On rocky crags by the sea, on shores fringed by oak or beech woods, in the shady depths of forests, on towering mountain tops, or on the banks of great rivers, one sees the ruins or the still inhabited buildings which once served as the dwellings of the monks who, with the cross as their only weapon, were the pioneers of our modern culture. Their flight from the life of traffic and bustle in the larger towns was by no means a flight from the beauties of Nature.' The last statement is only partly true. In the prime of the monastic era the beauties of Nature were held to be a snare of the devil. Still, in choosing a site, beauty of position was constantly referred to as an auxiliary motive. 'Bernhard loved the valley,' 'but Bernhard chose mountains,' are significant phrases.

38: Comp. Grimm,Deutsche Mythologie, on the old Germanic idea of a conflict between winter and spring.

39: Dümmler, vi.Carolus et Leo papa.

40: Walahfridi Strabi,De cultura hortorum.

41: Comp. H. von Eichen,Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung. Stuttg. Cotta, 1887.

1: Prutz,Geschichte der Kreuzzüge. Berlin, 1883.

2: Allatius,Symmicta. Coeln, 1653.

3:Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heiligen Lande, Roehricht und Meissner. Berlin, 1880.

4: For excellent bibliographical evidence seeDie geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalterin supplement toMünchner Allgem. Zeitung, January 1885.

5: Comp. Oehlmann,Die Alpenpässe im Mittelalter, Jahrbuch für Schweizer.

6: Biese,op. cit.

7: Fr. Diez,Leben und Werke der Troubadours. Zwickau, 1829

8:Des Minnesangs Frühling, von Lachmann-Haupt.

9:Geschichte der Malerei.Woermann und Wottmann.

10: 'Detailed study of Nature had begun; but the attempt to blend the separate elements into a background landscape in perspective betrayed the insecurity and constraint of dilettante work at every point.' Ludwig Kämmerer on the period before Van Eyck inDie Landschaft in der deutschen Kunst bis zum Tode Albrecht Dürers. Leipzig, 1880

1:Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien.

2:Untersuchungen über die kampanische Wandmalerei.Leipzig, 1873.

3: Comp. Schnaase,op. cit.

4:Argon, ii. 219; iii. 260, 298. Comp. Cic.ad Att., iv. 18, 3.

5:Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland.Berlin, 1882. (Oncken,Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstettungen, ii. 8.)

6:Itinerar. syr., Burckhardt ii.

7:Loci specie percussus, Burckhardt i.

8: In his paper 'Kulturgeschichte und Naturwissenschaft' (Deutsche Rundschau, vol. xiii.), which is full both of original ideas and of exaggerated summary opinions, Du Bois Reymond fails to do justice to this, and altogether misjudges Petrarch's feeling for Nature. After giving this letter in proof of mediæval feeling, he goes on to say: 'Fullof shame and remorse, he descends the mountain without another word. The poor fellow had given himself up to innocent enjoyment for a moment, without thinking of the welfare of his soul, and instead of gloomy introspection, had looked into the enticing outer world. Western humanity was so morbid at that time, that the consciousness of having done this was enough to cause painful inner conflict to a man like Petrarch--a man of refined feeling, and scientific, though not a deep thinker.' Even granting this, which is too tragically put, the world was on the very eve of freeing itself from this position, and Petrarch serves as a witness to the change.

9: Comp., too,De Genealogia Deorum, xv., in which he says of trees, meadows, brooks, flocks and herds, cottages, etc., that these things 'animum mulcent,' their effect is 'mentem in se colligere.'

10: Comp. Voigt,Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini als Papst Pius II. und sein Zeitalter.

11: Comp. Geiger and Ad. Wolff,Die Klassiker aller Zeiten und Nationen.

12: Quando mira la terra ornata e bella. Rime di V. Colonna.

13: Ombrosa selva che il mio duolo ascolti.

1: Ruge,Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen.Berlin, 1881. (Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen, von Oncken.)Die neu Welt der Landschaften, etc. Strasburg, 1534.

2:De rebus oceanicis et novo orbi Decades tres Petri Martyris at Angleria Mediolanensis, Coloniæ, 1574.

3:Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e Le Navagazioni, di Aloise da Mosto, di Pietro, di Cintra, di Anxone, di un Piloto Portuguese e di Vasco di Gama quali si leggono nella raccolta di Giovambattista Ramusio.Venezia, 1837.

4: For example, this from Ramusio: 'And the coast is all low land, full of most beautiful and very tall trees, which are evergreen, as the leaves do not wither as do those in our country, but a new leaf appears before the other is cast off: the trees extend right down into the marshy tract of shore, and look as if flourishing on the sea. The coast is a most glorious sight, and in my opinion, though I have cruised about in many parts both in the East and in the West, I have never seen any coast which surpassed this in beauty. It is everywhere washed by many rivers, and small streams of little importance, as big ships will not be able to enter them.

5: Ideler,Examen critique. Cosmos.

6:Coleccion de los viajes y decubrimientos que hicieron por mar los espanoles desde fines del siglo XV. con varios documentos ineditos ... co-ordinata e illustrada por Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete.Madrid, 1858.

7:Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen.

8: As he lay sick and despairing off Belem, an unknown voice said to him compassionately: 'O fool! and slow to believe and serve thy God.... He gave thee the keys of those barriers of the ocean sea which were closed with such mighty chains, and thou wast obeyed through many lands, and hast gained an honourable fame throughout Christendom.' In a letter to the King and Queen of Spain in fourth voyage.

9: Humboldt.

10: Biese,op. cit.

11: Zoeckler,Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft.

12: F. Hammerich,St Birgitta.

13: Zoeckler,op. cit.

14: Comp. Wilkens'Fray Luis de Leon. Halle, 1866.

15: Comp. Wilkens'Fray Luis de Leon. Halle, 1866.

16: Comp. Wilkens'Fray Luis de Leon. Halle, 1866.

17: Comp. Wilkens'Fray Luis de Leon. Halle, 1866.

18: Humboldt.

19: Comp. Carrière,Die Poesie.

20: Zoeckler, in Herzog'sReal-Encykl., xxi., refers to 'Le Solitaire des Indes ou la Vie de Gregoire Lopez.' Goerres,Die christliche Mystik; S. Arnold,Leben der Gläubigen; French,Life of St Teresa.

1: InShakespeare Studien, chap. 4, Hense treats Shakespeare's attitude towards Nature very suggestively; but I have gone my own way.

2:Hamlet, i. 3: 'The canker galls the infants of the spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed.' Comp. i. 1;Romeo and Juliet, i. 1;Henry VI., part 2, iii. 1;Tempest, i. 2.

3: Comp. Henkel,Das Goethe'sche Gleichnis;Henry IV., 2nd pt., iv. 4;Richard II., i. i;Othello, iii. 3, and v. 2;Cymbeline, ii. 4;King John, ii. 2;Hamlet, iii. 1;Tempest, iv. 2.

4: See Hense for bucolic idyllic traits.

5:Poetische Personifikation in griechischen Dichtungen.

1: Comp. Woermann,Ueber den landschaftlichen Natursinn der Griechen und Römer, Vorstudien zu einer Arckäologie der Landschaftsmalerei. München, 1871.

2: Comp. Schnaase,Geschichte der bildenden Künste im 15 Jahrhundert, edited by Lübke. Stuttgart, 1879.

3: Falke,Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks. Leipzig, 1880

4:Geschichte der deutschen Renaissance. Stuttgart, 1873.

5: Comp. also Kaemmerer,op. cit.

6: Lûbke,op. cit.

7: Lûbke refers to A. von Zahn's searching work,Durer's Kunstlehre und sein Verhältnis zur Renaissance. Leipzig, 1866.

8: Proportion III., B.T. iii. b. Nuremberg, 1528.

9:Op. cit.

10: In what follows, I have borrowed largely from Rosenberg's interesting writings (Greuzboten, Nos. 43 and 44, 1884-85), and still more from Schnaase, Falke, and Carrière, as I myself only know the masters represented at Berlin and Munich.

11: Kaemmerer,op. cit.

12: Kaemmerer,op. cit.

1:Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland.

2:Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland.

3: Zoeckler.

4: Comp. Hase,Sebastian Frank von Woerd der Schwarmgeist.

5: Comp. Hubert,Kleine Schriften.

6: Zoeckler, etc.

7: Comp. Uhland,Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage. Alte hoch und nieder deutsche Volkslieder, where plants, ivy, holly, box, and willow, represent summer and winter.

8: Uhland.

9: Uhland.

10: Wunderhorn.

11: Biese,op. cit.

12: Fred Cohn, 'Die Gärten in alter und neuer Zeit,' D. Rundschau18, 1879. In Italy in the sixteenth century there was a change to this extent, that greenery was no longer clipt, but allowed to grow naturally, and the garden represented the transition from palace to landscape, from bare architectural forms to the free creations of Nature. The passion for flowers--the art of the pleasure garden, flourished in Holland and Germany. (Falke.)

13: W.H. Riehl states (Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten) that Berlin, Augsburg, Leipzig, Darmstadt, and Mannheim were described in the seventeenth century as having 'very fine and delightful positions'; and the finest parts of the Black Forest, Harz and Thuringian mountains as 'very desolate,' deserted, and monotonous, or, at best, as not particularly pleasant scenery. If only a region were flat and treeless, a delicious landscape could be charmed out of it. Welcker, Court physician at Hesse Cassel, describing Schlangenbad in 1721, said that it lay in a desolate, unpleasing district, where nothing grew but foliage and grass,but that through ingenious planting of clipt trees in lines and cross lines, some sort of artistic effect had been produced. Clearly the principles of French garden-craft had become a widely accepted dogma of taste. Riehl contrasts the periwig period with the mediæval, and concludes that the mediæval backgrounds of pictures implied feeling for the wild and romantic. He says: 'In the Middle Ages the painters chose romantic jagged forms of mountains and rocks for backgrounds, hence the wild, bare, and arid counted as a prototype of beautiful scenery, while some centuries later such forms were held to be too rustic and irregular for beauty.' One cannot entirely agree with this. He weakens it himself in what follows. 'It was not a real scene which rose Alp-like before their mind's eye, but an imaginary and sacred one; their fantastic, romantic ideal called for rough and rugged environment': and adds, arguing in a circle, 'Their minds passed then to real portraiture of Nature, and decided the landscape eye of the period.' My own opinion is that the loftiness of the 'heroic' mountain backgrounds seemed suitable for the sacred subjects which loomed so large and sublime in their own minds, and that these backgrounds did not reveal their ideal of landscape beauty, nor 'a romantic feeling for Nature,' nor 'a taste for the romantic,' nor yet a wondrous change of view in the periwig period.

14: In hisHarburg Programof 1883(Beiträge zur Geschichte des Naturgefühls), after an incomplete survey of ancient and modern writings on the subject, Winter sketches the development of modern feeling for Nature in Germany from Opitz to 1770, as shewn in the literature of that period, basing his information chiefly upon Goedeke'sDeutsche Dichtung.

15: Comp. ChoveliusDie bedeutendsten deutschen Romanz des 17 Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1866.

16: Chovelius.

17: Daniel Lohenstein'sBlumen. Breslau, 1689.

1: Freiherr von Ditfurth,Deutsche Volks und Gesellschaftslieder des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts, 1872.

2: Goedeke-Tittmannschen Sammlung, xiii.,Trutz-Nachtigall.

3:Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur.

4: Tittmann'sDeutsche Dichter des 17 Jahrhunderts, vol. vi.

5: Comp., too, iv. 5: 'Die ihr alles hört und saget, Luft and Forst und Meer durchjaget; Echo, Sonne, Mond, und Wind, Sagt mir doch, wo steckt mein Kind?'

21. 'Den sanften West bewegt mein Klagen, Es rauschtder Bach den Seufzern nach Aus Mitleid meiner Plagen; Die Vögel schweigen, Um nur zu zeigen Dass diese schöne Tyrannei Auch Tieren überlegen sei.'Abendliedcontains beautiful personifications: 'Der Feierabend ist gemacht, Die Arbeit schläft, der Traum erwacht, Die Sonne führt die Pferde trinken; Der Erdkreis wandert zu der Ruh, Die Nacht drückt ihm die Augen zu, Die schon dem süssen Schlafe winken.'

6: Hettner,Litteraturgeschichte des 18 Jahrhunderts.

7: Lappenberg inZeitschrift für Hamburgische Geschichte, ii. Hettner,op. cit.

8: 'Ye fields and woods, my refuge from the toilsome world of business, receive me in your quiet sanctuaries and favour my Retreat and thoughtful Solitude. Ye verdant plains, how gladly I salute ye! Hail all ye blissful Mansions! Known Seats! Delightful Prospects! Majestick Beautys of this earth, and all ye rural Powers and Graces! Bless'd be ye chaste Abodes of happiest Mortals who here in peaceful Innocence enjoy a Life unenvy'd, the Divine, whilst with its bless'd Tranquility it affords a happy Leisure and Retreat for Man, who, made for contemplation and to search his own and other natures, may here best meditate the cause of Things, and, plac'd amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer view her Works. O glorious Nature! supremely fair and sovereignly good! All-loving and All-lovely All-Divine! Whose looks are so becoming, and of such infinite grace, whose study brings such Wisdom, and whose contemplation such Delight.... Since by thee (O Sovereign mind!) I have been form'd such as I am, intelligent and rational; since the peculiar Dignity of my Nature is to know and contemplate Thee; permit that with due freedom I exert those Facultys with which thou hast adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And since not vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save Thee alone, inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my Assistant, and guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to tread the Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee in thy Works.'

9: Comp. Jacob von Falke, 'Der englische Garten' (Nord und Süd, Nov. 1884), and hisGeschichte des modernen Geschmacks.

10:Dessins des édifices, meubles, habits, machines, et utensils des Chinois, 1757.

1: 'Die Alpen im Lichte verschiedener Zeitalter,'Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Virchow und Holtzendorff. Berlin, 1877.

Geschäfte Zwang und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift;Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift.Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch,Und jede Staude fühlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch.Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefällt und hüpft und singt,Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjüngt.Ihr Thäler und ihr Höhen Die Lust und Sommer schmückt!Euch ungestört zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt.Die Reizung freier Felder Beschämt der Gärten Pracht,Und in die offnen Wälder Wird ohne Zwang gelacht....In jährlich neuen Schätzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Glück,Und Freiheit und Ergötzen Erheitern seinen Blick....Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur;Ihm grünet Lust und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.'

Geschäfte Zwang und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift;

Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift.

Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch,

Und jede Staude fühlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch.

Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefällt und hüpft und singt,

Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjüngt.

Ihr Thäler und ihr Höhen Die Lust und Sommer schmückt!

Euch ungestört zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt.

Die Reizung freier Felder Beschämt der Gärten Pracht,

Und in die offnen Wälder Wird ohne Zwang gelacht....

In jährlich neuen Schätzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Glück,

Und Freiheit und Ergötzen Erheitern seinen Blick....

Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur;

Ihm grünet Lust und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.'

3:Litteratur geschichte.

4:Sämtliche poetische Werke, J.P. Uz. Leipzig, 1786.

5:Sämtliche Werke. Berlin, 1803.

6:Sämtliche Werke, J.G. Jacobi, vol. viii. Zurich, 1882.

7: He said of his garden at Freiburg, which was laid out in terraces on a slope, that all that Flora and Pomona could offer was gathered there. It had a special Poet's Corner on a hillock under a poplar, where a moss-covered seat was laid for him upon some limestone rock-work; white and yellow jasmine grew round, and laurels and myrtles hung down over his head. Here he would rest when he walked in the sun; on his left was a mossy Ara, a little artificial stone altar on which he laid his book, and from here he could gaze across the visible bit of the distant Rhine to the Vosges, and give himself up undisturbed to his thoughts.

8: GessnersSchriften. Zurich, 1770.

9: Spalding,Die Bestimmung des Menschen. Leipzig, 1768.

10: Klopstock'sBriefe. Brunswick, 1867.

11: Comp.Odes, 'Die Kunst Tialfs' and 'Winterfreuden.'

12:Briefe.

13: Julian Schmidt.

14: Comp. his letters from Switzerland, which contain nothing particular about the scenery, although he crossed the Lake of Zurich, and 'a wicked mountain' to the Lake of Zug and Lucerne.

15: Claudius, who, at a time when the lyric both of poetry and music was lost in Germany in conventional tea and coffee songs, was the first to rediscover the direct expression of feeling--that is, Nature feeling. (Storm'sHausbuch.)

1: I have obtained much information and suggestion from 'Ueber die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter,' and 'Ueber die Alpine Reiselitteratur in fruherer Zeit,' inAllgem. Zeitung. Jan. 11, 1885, and Sept. 1885, respectively.

2:Evagatorium 3, Bibliothek d. litterar. Vereins. Stuttgart, 1849.

3:Bibliothek des litterar. Vereins. Stuttgart, 1886.

4:Descriptio Larii lacus. Milan, 1558.

5:Itinerarium Basil. 1624.

6: Osenbrüggen,Wanderungen in der Schweiz, 1867;Entwickelungsgeschichte des Schweizreisens; Friedländer,Ueber die Entstehung und Entwickelung.

7: Comp. Erich Schmidt,Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe. Jena, 1875.

8: Remarks on several parts of Italy. London, 1761.

9: Letters of Lady M. Wortley Montagu, Sept. 25, 1718.

10: Friedländer,op. cit.

11: Schmidt. Moser's description of a sensitive soul inPatriotischen Phantasienis most amusing.

12: Laprade adduces little of importance in his bookLe Sentiment de la Nature(2nd edition), the first volume of which I have dealt with elsewhere. I have little in common with Laprade, although he is the only writer who has treated the subject comprehensively and historically. His standpoint is that of Catholic theology; he never separates feeling for Nature from religion, and is severe upon unbelievers. The book is well written, and in parts clever, but only touches the surface and misses much. His position is thus laid down: 'Le vrai sentiment de la Nature, le seul poétique, le seul fécond et puissant, le seul innocent de tout danger, est celui qui ne sépare jamais l'idée des choses visibles de la pensée de Dieu.' He accounts for the lack of any important expressions of feeling for Nature in French classics with: 'Le génie de la France est le génie de l'action.' and 'L'âme humaine est le but de la poésie.' He recognizes that even with Fénélon 'la Nature reste à ses yeux comme une simple décoration du drame que l'homme y joue, le poëte en lui ne la regarde jamais à travers les yeux du mystique.' Of the treatment of Nature in La Fontaine's Fables, he says: 'Ce n'est pas peindre la Nature, c'est l'abolir'; and draws this conclusion: 'Le sentiment de l'infini est absent de la poésie du dix-septième siècle aussi bien que le sentiment de la Nature'; and again: 'L'esprit général du dix-huitième siècle est la négation même de la poésie ... l'amour de la Nature n'était guerre autrechose qu'une haine déguisée et une déclaration de guerre a la société et a la réligion. Il n'y a pai trace du sentiment légitime et profond qui attire l'artiste et le poëte vers les splendeurs de la création, révélatrices du monde invisible. Ne demandez pas an dix-huitème siècle la poésie de la Nature, pas plus que celle du coeur.' Buffon shews 'l'état poétique des sciences de la Nature,' but his brilliant prose painting lacks 'la présence de Dieu, la révélation de l'infini les harmonies de l'âme et de la Nature n'existent pas pour Buffon.... plus de la rhétorique que de vrai sentiment de la Nature.'

13: Comp. the garden of Elysium inLa Nouvelle Héloise:Where the gardener's hand is nowhere to be discerned, nothing contradicts the idea of a desert island, and I cannot perceive any footsteps of men ... you see nothing here in an exact row, nothing level, Nature plants nothing by the ruler.'

14:OEuvres de Jacques Bernardin Henri de Saint Pierre.

15: 'B. de S. Pierre a plus que Rousseau les facultés propres du paysagiste, l'amour même du pittoresque, la vive curiosité des sites, des animaux, et des plants, la couleur et une certaine magie spéciale du pinceau,' Laprade adds the reproof: 'Sa pensée réligieuse est au-dessous de son talent d'artiste et en abaisse le niveau.'

16:Voyage round the World, 1772-1775.

17: Paul Lemnius, 1597,Landes Rugiae; Kosegarten, 1777-1779; Rellstab, 1799,Ausflucht noch der Insel Rügen;Navest, 1800,Wanderungen durch die Insel Rügen; Grümbke, 1805;Indigena, Streifzüge durch das Rügenland. J.P. Hackert in 1762, and K. D. Friedrichs in 1792, painted the scenery. Comp. E. Boll,Die Inset Rügen, 1858.

1: Comp. Gottschall,Poetik. Breslau, 1853.

2:Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker, SämtlicheWerke, Teil 7.

3:Op. cit., Teil 15.

4:Zur Philosophie und Gesehichte,2 Teil.

5: J.G. Sulzer'sUnterredungen über die Schönheit der Nätur nebst desselben moralischen Betrachtungen über besondere Gegenstände der Naturlehreis typical. Charites describes his conversion to the love of Nature by his friend Eukrates. Eukrates woke him at dawn and led him to a hill close by, as the sun rose. The fresh air, the birds' songs, and the wide landscape move him, and Eukrates points out that the love of Nature is the 'most natural of pleasures,' makingthe labourer so happy that he forgets servitude and misery, and sings at his work. 'This pleasure is always new to us, and the heart, provided it be not possessed by vanity or stormy passions, lies always open to it. Do you not know that they who are in trouble, and, above all, they who are in love, find their chief relief here? Is not a sick man better cheered by sunshine than by any other refreshment?' Then he points out Nature's harmonies and changes of colour, and warns Charites to avoid the storms of the passions. 'Yonder brook is a picture of our soul; so long as it runs quietly between its banks, the water is clear and grass and flowers border it; but when it swells and flows tumultuously, all this ornament is torn away, and it becomes turbid. To delight in Nature the mind must be free.... She is a sanctity only approached by pure souls.... As only the quiet stream shews the sky and the objects around, so it is only on quiet souls that Nature's pictures are painted; ruffled water reflects nothing.' He waxes eloquent about birds' songs, flowers, and brooks, and wanders by the hour in the woods, 'all his senses open to Nature's impressions,' which are 'rays from that source of all beauty, the sight of which will one day bless the soul.' His friend is soon convinced that Nature cannot be overpraised, and that her art is endlessly great.

6:Vorn Gefühl des Schönen und Physiologie überhaupt.Winter.

7: Comp.Das Fluchtigste. 'Tadle nicht der Nachtigallen, Bald verhallend süsses Lied,' oder 'Nichts verliert sich,' etc.

8: Herder'sNachlass, Düntzer und F.G. von Herder, 1857.

9: Bernay'sDer junge Goethe.

10:Die Sprödde, Die Bekehrte, März, Lust und Qual, Luna, Gegenwart.

11: Laprade is all admiration for the 'incomparable artiste et poëte inspiré du sentiment de la Nature, c'est qu'il excelle à peindre le monde extérieur et le coeur humain l'un par l'autre, qu'il mêle les images de l'univers visible à l'expression des sentiments intimes, de manière à n'en former qu'un seul tissu.... Tous les éléments d'un objet d'une situation apparaissent à la fois, et dans leur harmonie, essentielle à cet incomparable esprit.' He is astonished at the symbolism inWerthtr: 'Chaque lettre répond à la saison ou elle est écrite.... l'idee et l'image s'identifient dans un fait suprême, dans un cri; il se fait entre l'émotion intime et l'impression du dehors une sorte de fusion.' And despite Goethe's Greek paganism and pantheism, he declares: 'Le nom de Goethe marque une de ces grandes dates, une de ces grandes révolutions de la poésie--la plus grande, nous le croyons, depuis Homer.' ... 'Goetheest la plus haut expression poétique des tendances de notre siècle vers le monde extérieur et la philosophie de la Nature.'

12: Comp.Tagebucher und Briefe Goethe's aus Italien an Frau von Stein und Herder. E. Schmidt, Weimar, 1886.

13: Julian Schmidt.

14:The Lady of the Lakebreathes a delightful freshness, the very spirit of mountain and wood, free alike from the moral preaching of Wordsworth, and from the storms of passion.

15: Laprade.

16: 'Sa formule réligieuse, c'est une question; sa pensée, c'est le doute ... l'artiste divinise chaque détail. Son panthéisme ne s'applique pas seulement à l'ensemble des choses; Dieu tout entier est réellement présent poor lui dans chaque fragment de matière dans le plus immonde animal ... c'est une réligion aussi vieille que l'humanité décline; cela s'appelle purement et simplement le fétichisme.' (Laprade.)

17:Vorschule der Æsthetik. Compare 'With every genius a new Nature is created for us in the further unveiling of the old.' 2 Aufi.Berlin Reimer, 1827.

18: 'Like a lily softly swaying in the hushed air, so my being moves in its elements, in the charming dream of her.' 'Our souls rush forward in colossal plans, like exulting streams rushing perpetually through mountain and forest.' 'If the old mute rock of Fate did not stand opposing them, the waves of the heart would never foam so beautifully and become mind.' 'There is a night in the soul which no gleam of starlight, not even dry wood, illuminates,' etc.

19: Comp. Tieck'sBiographie von Koepke. Brandes.

20:Franz Sternbald, I. Berlin, 1798.

21: Haym,Die romantische Schule. Berlin, 1870.

22:Phantasus, i. Berlin, 1812.

23: 'A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the mountains in a thoughtful mood beside his fowling-piece, while the noise of the water and the woods was sounding through the solitude ... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot with fitful wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled a straggling root from the earth, and on the instant heard with affright a stifled moan underground, which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively away in the deep distance. The sound went through his inmost heart; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in its agony.' (Runenberg.)

24:Hymnen an die Nacht.

25: InDie Lehrlinge von Sais.

26:Athenäum, iii., 1800.

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