The effect of landscape painting, notwithstanding the multiplication of its productions by engravings and by the modern improvements of lithography, is still both more limited and less vivid, than the stimulus which results from the impression produced on minds alive to natural beauty by the direct view of groups of exotic plants in hot-houses or in the open air. I have already appealed on this subject to my own youthful experience, when the sight of a colossal dragon tree and of a fan palm in an old tower of the botanic garden at Berlin, implanted in my breast the first germ of an irrepressible longing for distant travel. Those who are able to reascend in memory to that which may have given the first impulse to their entire course of life, will recognise this powerful influence of impressions received through the senses.

I would here distinguish between those plantations which are best suited to afford us the picturesque impression of the forms of plants, and those in which they are arranged as auxiliaries to botanical studies; between groups distinguished for their grandeur and mass, as clumps of Bananas and Heliconias alternating with Corypha Palms, Araucarias and Mimosas, and moss-covered trunks from which shoot Dracontias, Ferns with their delicate foliage, and Orchideæ rich in varied and beautiful flowers, on the one hand; and on the other, a number of separate low-growing plants classed and arranged in rows for the purpose of conveying instruction in descriptive and systematic botany.

Plato describes the narrow limits of the Mediterranean in a manner quite appropriate to enlarged cosmographical views. He says, in the Phædo, “we who dwell from the Phasis to the Pillars of Hercules, inhabit only a small portion of the earth, in which we have settled round the (interior) sea, like ants or frogs around a marsh.” It is from this narrow basin, on the margin of which Egyptian, Phœnician, and Hellenic nations flourished and attained a brilliant civilisation, that the colonisation of great territories in Asia and Africa has proceeded; and that those nautical enterprises have gone forth, which have lifted the veil from the whole western hemisphere of the globe.

The present form of the Mediterranean shews traces of a former subdivision into three smaller closed basins. The Ægean portion is bounded to the south by a curved line, which, commencing at the coast of Caria in Asia Minor, is formed by the islands of Rhodes, Crete, and Cerigo, joining the Peloponnesus not far from Cape Malea. More to the west we have the Ionian Sea, or the Syrtic basin, in which Malta is situated: the western point of Sicily approaches to within forty-eight geographical miles of the African shore; and we might almost regard the sudden but transient elevation of the burning island of Ferdinandea (1831), to the southwest of the limestone rocks of Sciacca, as an effort of nature to reclose the Syrtic basin, by connecting together Cape Grantola, the Adventure bank (examined by Captain Smith), the island of Pantellaria, and the African Cape Bon,—and thus to divide it from the third, the westernmost, or Tyrrhenian basin.

INCITEMENTS TO THE STUDY OF NATURE.

We now pass from the domain of objects to that of sensations. The principal results of observation, in the form in which, stripped of all additions derived from the imagination, they belong to a pure scientific description of nature, have been presented in the preceding volume. We have now to consider the impression which the image received by the external senses produces on the feelings, and on the poetic and imaginative faculties of mankind. An inward world here opens to the view, into which we desire to penetrate, not, however, for the purpose of investigating—as would be required if the philosophy of art were our aim—what in æsthetic performances belongs essentially to the powers and dispositions of the mind, and what to the particular direction of the intellectual activity,—but that we may trace the sources of that animated contemplation which enhances a genuine enjoyment of nature, and discover the particular causes which, in modern times especially, have so powerfully promoted, through the medium of the imagination, a predilection for the study of nature, and for the undertaking of distant voyages.

I approach the termination of a comprehensive and hazardous undertaking. More than two thousand years have been passed in review, from the earliest state of intellectual cultivation among the nations who dwelt round the basin of the Mediterranean and in the fertile river districts of Western Asia, to a period the views and feelings of which pass by almost imperceptible shades into those of our own age. I have sought to present the history of the gradually developed knowledge and recognition of the Universe as a whole, in seven distinctly marked sections, or as it were in a series of as many distinct pictures. Whether any measure of success has attended this attempt to maintain in their due subordination the mass of accumulated materials, to seize the character of the leading epochs, and to mark the paths in which ideas and civilisation have been conducted onwards, cannot be determined by him who, with a just mistrust of his remaining powers, knows only that the type of so great an undertaking has floated in clear, though general, outlines before his mental eye.

In the early part of the section occupied by the epoch of the Arabians, in beginning to describe the powerful influence exerted by the blending of a foreign element with European civilisation, I determined the period from which the history of the Cosmos becomes coincident with that of the physical sciences.

In tracing the intellectual progress of mankind and the gradual extension of cosmical views, the period of the Roman universal Empire presents itself as one of the most important epochs. We now for the first time find all those fertile regions of the globe which surround the basin of the Mediterranean connected in a bond of close political union, which also comprehended extensive countries to the eastward. I may here appropriately notice, that this political union gives to the picture which I endeavour to trace, (that of the history of the contemplation of the universe), an objective unity of presentation. Our civilization, i. e. the intellectual development of all the nations of the European Continent, may be regarded as based on that of the dwellers around the Mediterranean, and more immediately on that of the Greeks and the Romans. That which we term, perhaps too exclusively, classical literature, has received this denomination through men's recognition of the source from whence our earliest know ledge has largely flowed, and which gave the first impulse to a class of ideas and feelings most intimately connected with the civilization and intellectual elevation of a nation or a race. We do not by any means regard as unimportant the elements of knowledge, which, flowing through the great current of Greek and Roman cultivation, were yet derived in a variety of ways from other sources—from the valley of the Nile, Phœnicia, the banks of the Euphrates, and India; but even for these we are indebted, in the first instance, to the Greeks, and to Romans surrounded by Etruscans and Greeks.

In my sketch of the history of the physical contemplation of the universe, I have already enumerated four leading epochs in the gradual development of the recognition of the universe as a whole. These included, firstly, the period when the inhabitants of the coasts of the Mediterranean endeavoured to penetrate eastward to the Euxine and the Phasis, southward to Ophir and the tropical gold lands, and westward through the Pillars of Hercules into the “all-surrounding ocean;” secondly, the epoch of the Macedonian expeditions under Alexander the Great; thirdly, the period of the Lagidæ; and fourthly, that of the Roman Empire of the World. We have now to consider the powerful influence exercised by the Arabians, whose civilization was a new element foreign to that of Europe,—and, six or seven centuries later, by the maritime discoveries of the Portuguese and Spaniards,—on the general physical and mathematical knowledge of nature, in respect to form and measurement on the earth and in the regions of space, to the heterogeneity of substances, and to the powers or forces resident therein. The discovery and exploration of the New Continent, with its lofty Cordilleras and their numerous volcanoes, its elevated plateaus with successive stages of climate placed one above another, and its various vegetation ranging through 120 degrees of latitude, mark incontestably the period in which there was offered to the human mind, in the smallest space of time, the greatest abundance of new physical perceptions.

The Macedonian Expeditions under Alexander the Great, the downfal of the Persian Empire, the beginning of intercourse with Western India, and the influence of the 116 years' duration of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, mark one of the most important epochs of General History; or of that part of the progressive development of the History of the Human Race, which treats of the more intimate communication and union of the European countries of the West with South-Western Asia, the Valley of the Nile and Lybia. The sphere of the development of community of life, or of the common action and mutual influence of different nations, was not only immensely enlarged in material space, but it was also powerfully strengthened, and its moral grandeur increased, by the constant tendency of the unceasing efforts of the conqueror towards a blending of all the different races, and the formation of a general unity, under the animating influences of the Grecian spirit. The foundation of so many new cities at points the selection of which indicates higher and more general aims, the formation and arrangement of an independent community for the government of those cities, the tenderness of treatment towards national usages and native worship, all testify that the plan for a great organic whole was laid. At a later period, as is always the case, much which may not have been originally comprehended in the plan, developed itself from the nature of the relations established.

It has often been said, that if delight in nature were not altogether unknown to the ancients, yet that its expression was more rare and less animated among them than in modern times. Schiller, in his considerations on naïve and sentimental poetry, remarks, that “when we think of the glorious scenery which surrounded the ancient Greeks, and remember the free and constant intercourse with nature in which their happier skies enabled them to live, as well as how much more accordant their manners, their habits of feeling, and their modes of representation, were with the simplicity of nature, of which their poetic works convey so true an impress, we cannot but remark with surprise how few traces we find amongst them of the sentimental interest with which we moderns attach ourselves to natural scenes and objects. In the description of these, the Greek is indeed in the highest degree exact, faithful, and circumstantial, but without exhibiting more warmth of sympathy than in treating of a garment, a shield, or of a suit of armour. Nature appears to interest his understanding rather than his feelings; he does not cling to her with intimate affection and sweet melancholy, as do the moderns.”

In attempting to recount the most distinctly marked periods and gradations of the development of cosmical contemplation, we have in the last section endeavoured to depict the epoch, in which one hemisphere of the globe first became known to the cultivated nations inhabiting the other. The epoch of the most extensive discoveries upon the surface of our planet was immediately succeeded by man's first taking possession of a considerable part of the celestial spaces by the telescope. The application of a newly formed organ, of an instrument of space-penetrating power, called forth a new world of ideas. Now began a brilliant age of astronomy and mathematics; and in the latter the long series of profound investigators, leading to the “all-transforming” Leonard Euler, the year of whose birth (1707) is so near the year of Jacob Bernouilli's death.

A few names may suffice to recal the giant strides with which the human mind advanced in the 17th century, less from any outward incitements than from its own independent energies, and especially in the development of mathematical thought. The laws that regulate the fall of bodies, and the planetary motions, were recognised; the pressure of the atmosphere, the propagation of light, and its refraction and polarisation, were investigated. Mathematico-physical science was created, and established on firm foundations.

After the dissolution of the great Macedonian Empire comprising territories in the three Continents, the germs which the uniting and combining system of the government of Alexander had deposited in a fruitful soil, began to develop themselves every where, although with much diversity of form. In proportion as the national exclusiveness of the Hellenic character of thought vanished, and its creative inspiring power was less strikingly characterised by depth and intensity, increasing progress was made in the knowledge of the connection of phenomena, by a more animated and more extensive intercourse between nations, as well as by a generalisation of the views of Nature based on argumentative considerations. In the Syrian kingdom, by the Attalidæ of Pergamos, and under the Seleucidæ and the Ptolemies, this progress was favoured and promoted every where and almost at the same time by distinguished sovereigns. Grecian Egypt enjoyed the advantage of political unity, as well as that of geographical position; the influx of the Red Sea through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to Suez and Akaba, (occupying one of the SSE.-NNW. fissures, of which I have elsewhere spoken), bringing the traffic and intercourse of the Indian Ocean within a few miles of the coasts of the Mediterranean.

The kingdom of the Seleucidæ did not enjoy the advantages of sea traffic, which the distribution of land and water, and the configuration of the coast line, offered to that of the Lagidæ; and its stability was endangered by the divisions produced by the diversity of the nations of which the different Satrapies were composed.

As fresh and vivid descriptions of natural scenes and objects are suited to enhance a love for the study of nature, so also is landscape painting. Both shew to us the external world in all its rich variety of forms, and both are capable, in various degrees, according as they are more or less happily conceived, of linking together the outward and the inward world. It is the tendency to form such links which marks the last and highest aim of representative art; but the scientific object to which these pages are devoted, restricts them to a different point of view; and landscape painting can be here considered only as it brings before us the characteristic physiognomy of different positions of the earth's surface, as it increases the longing desire for distant voyages, and as, in a manner equally instructive and agreeable, it incites to fuller intercourse with nature in her freedom.

In classical antiquity, from the peculiar direction of the Greek and Roman mind, landscape painting, like the poetic description of scenery, could scarcely become an independent object of art: both were used only as auxiliaries. Employed in complete subordination to other objects, landscape painting long served merely as a background to historical composition, or as an accidental ornament in the decoration of painted walls.

The fifteenth century belongs to those rare epochs in the history of the world, in which all the efforts of the human mind are invested with a determinate and common character, and manifest an unswerving direction towards a single object. The unity of these endeavours, the success with which they were crowned, and the vigour and activity displayed by entire nations, give grandeur and enduring splendour to the age of Columbus, of Sebastian Cabot, and of Vasco de Gama. Intervening between two different stages of cultivation, the fifteenth century forms a transition epoch belonging at once to the middle ages and to the commencement of modern times. It is the epoch of the greatest discoveries in geographical space, comprising almost all degrees of latitude, and almost every gradation of elevation of the earth's surface. To the inhabitants of Europe it doubled the works of Creation, while at the same time it offered to the intellect new and powerful incitements to the improvement of the natural sciences in their physical and mathematical departments.

The world of objects, now as in Alexander's campaigns but with yet more preponderating power, presented to the combining mind the separate forms of sensible objects, and the concurrent action of animating powers or forces.

Principal epochs of the progressive development and extension of the idea of the Cosmos as an organic whole.

The history of the physical contemplation of the universe is the history of the recognition of nature as a whole; it is the recital of the endeavours of man to conceive and comprehend the concurrent action of natural forces on the earth and in the regions of space: it accordingly marks the epochs of progress in the generalisation of physical views. It is that part of the history of our world of thought which relates to objects perceived by the senses, to the form of conglomerated matter, and to the forces by which it is pervaded.

In the first portion of this work, in the section on the limitation and scientific treatment of a physical description of the universe, I have endeavoured to point out the true relation which the separate branches of natural knowledge bear to that description, and to shew that the science of the Cosmos derives from those separate studies only the materials for its scientific foundation. The history of the recognition or knowledge of the universe as a whole,—of which history I now propose to present the leading ideas, and which, for the sake of brevity, I here term sometimes the “history of the Cosmos,” and sometimes the “history of the physical contemplation of the universe,”—must not, therefore, be confounded with the “history of the natural sciences,” as it is given in several of our best elementary books of physics, or in those of the morphology of plants and animals.