selves, in fantastic piles, even to the clouds; and where Nature, bold and rough, in silent terror,

Sits alone

Majestic on her craggy throne!

There rove transported, among scenes so awful and sublime, that the breath is suspended, while gazing on their wonders: there, where the race of man appears to be extinct; where not a tree nor a shrub, nor a cottage, will remind you of humanity; and where no sound is heard, but the rushing of waters, the solemn roar of the winds, the screams of the kite, or the cries of the eagle.

Indulging in the contemplation of this scene, till the faculties of the mind are suspended, pursue the windings of the defile and after guarding yourself from the possibility of falling from the margin of a precipice, stand upon its edge, and cast your eyes below.-A beautiful and romantic glen stretches at the bottom! No! scarcely in all Nature can a scene, more truly grand, be seen than this imprisoned paradise! May he, who sees Nant Frangon, ("Beauty sleeping in the lap of Horror !") and sees it with indifference, stand, to eternal ages, at the bottom of the glen, a monument of his baseness! For my own part, I should have considered it a moral misfortune, as well as a moral disgrace, had I been capable of witnessing such a scene, with any other feelings, than those of wonder and awe, astonishment, and devotion.

These are scenes, totally abandoned to the rude and matchless finger of Nature; and which man, excelling in the liberal arts, has never yet presumed to touch. Scenes, which admit of no conversation; and yet appear to have

a soul, residing in them, which, animated by their charms, furnish recompenses, more than sufficient for their silence and solitude. Speaking a language, clear and distinct in cause, various and powerful in operation, it is permitted the enraptured spectator to admire and to meditate, but not to speak.

Hence arises a soft and holy rapture, which, to a mind long accustomed to contemplate the imbecility of man, or to feel the benumbing influence of all human causes of action, is as delightful as water, distilling from the leaves of the fountain-tree, is to the palate of a traveller, whose lips have long been parched with ungovernable thirst.

CHAPTER II.

SUCH effects have scenes, like those of Nant-Frangon, upon the mind and heart, that the poets and sacred writers, not unfrequently, imagine hills and woods to become vocal; to have sensation; and, participating in the delight they impart, to lift up their voices in praise and gratitude. Thus vales are said to smile, water to blush', woods to whisper, trees to have ears, mountains

1 Vid. Crashaw's Sacred Epigrams. Aquæ in vinum versæ.

• Woods to admire (En. viii. 1. 91.): ether to laugh (Cassimir ad Testud.): the ocean to smile (Lucret. i. 8.): rivers to have ambition (Solin. Polyhist. c 35.): the air to listen (En. vii. 33.): and winds to be sensible of the powers of music (Comus, 87.) Josephus, in relating the parable of Jotham, introduces it by saying, that there was a time, when the trees had meetings, in order to regulate the government of the vegetable part of the creation, and

to listen1 and to speak, waterfalls to feel the effects of love3; while the sea, in a calm, lulling evening, as the waves recoil from the beach, is said to listen to its own

roar.

These metaphors are perpetual in poetry, and not unfrequent in common conversation. In reference to the imaginary qualities, with which we endow the various objects of landscape, the poets occasionally address themselves to those objects, as if they were capable of hearing and obeying the call. Thus Moschus, in his highly finished elegy on the death of Bion, calls upon the woods and fountains to mingle their sorrow with his1; and Milton, whose subject and whose genius sublimed him beyond the limits of the world, and after whom, as

to appoint one to rule the whole. In respect to personifications in general, the ancient poets were far inferior to the moderns. The "Atra Cura" of Horace; the "Durus Labor" of Seneca, the tragedian; the "Spes" and the "Somnus" of Tibullus; and even the "Medicina" of Lucretius, all sink beneath the personifications of Collins, as a Satyr crouches before the blushes of Hyperion. There are not finer personifications in Homer, than those of the Ganges and the Tigris, in the fourth book of Camoens; where those rivers are represented, as appearing in a vision to Emanuel; and predicting, that in his reign the Indian Ocean shall be united, by commerce, to that of the Atlantic.

1 Darwin's Loves of the Plants, cant. i. l. 347. 2 Hor. lib. ii. od. 7.

3 Econ. Veget. iii. 271.

* In a Javanese inscription, found at Surabaya, the flowers and plants are said to turn pale with grief, and perish in sympathy for the loss of the king, their owner and in a Javanese epic, thunder is described as weeping in tears of rain +.

* Asiatic Journ. vol. iii. p. 442.

Vid. Analysis of the Bráta Yudha. Raffles's Hist. Java, vol. i. p. 460. 4to.

Johnson finely observed of Shakespeare, "Time toiled and panted in vain," has a transcendant passage in the morning hymn, sung by our first parents, where they call upon the visible creation to join with them in celebrating their great Father. After invoking the angels of light, the sun, the moon', the stars, the air, and the elements, Adam invites the mists and exhalations, the pines and plants, the winds and fountains, to accompany him in his devotions, and to be witness against him, if, at any time, he should neglect his morning or his evening orisons. In the Song of the Three Children, the Hebrew poet addresses the nights and days; the sun and moon; the winds, dews, and storms; the ice, hail, and snow; the fountains, rivers, and seas; the fowls of the air, and every object in Nature, to praise and glorify the hand that made them. Camoens makes the various objects of Nature mourn for the death of Alonzo 3. What can be more elegant than Young's address to the lilies? In Ossian, how beautiful-" Retire, O sun! the daughter of Colla is asleep. She will not come forth in her beauty: she will not move in the steps of her loveliness 5." In Isaiah, how sublime!" Hear, O Heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me." The following passage is scarcely unworthy Isaiah himself:-" The spirit of Loda shrieked; as it rolled into himself, he rose on the wind.

Virgil has a beautiful instance in Episod. Nys. et Euryal. En. ix.

2 Aufidius swears by them; vid. Coriolanus, act i. sc. 10.

Inisterre shook at the sound. The waves heard it on the deep. They stopped in their course with fear."

II.

The Welsh poets frequently address Snowdon, as if it were capable of hearing and answering the call. This species of personification' is not unfrequent in the sacred writers. Jeremiah has a bold example of this kind; and an instance occurs in the second book of Samuel, where David, hearing of the death of Saul and Jonathan, in all the nature, and with all the strength of passion, bursts into imprecations against the mountains of Gilboa3. The practice is extended to every object in landscape. Many instances occur in Euripides; and in Sophocles, there is a fine passage in one of his tragedies, where he makes Ajax address himself to the sun; and prays it to stop in its progress over his native country, in order to relate his misfortunes to his father and mother. Virgil has several beautiful examples; and Cicero a remarkable one in his treatise, on the Nature of the Gods. In the midst of his oration for Milo, he invokes the groves and tumuli of Alba, in a manner, which it were impossible not to admire. Dante has an admirable apos→ trophe to the waterfalls of Casentino5; and Southern, a still finer one to the sun, in his tragedy of Oroonoko. Virgil makes the sun mourn for the death of Cæsar 6; and Ovid makes the seventh star of the Pleiades hide

1 Zachariah, ch. xv. v. 1, 2. Habakuk, ch. iii. v. 10.