The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times

blessed. Mind and heart were almost entirely engrossed by the dogmas of the new faith, such as the incarnation, original sin, and free-will, and by doubts which the Old Testame

quity died out. In spite of this, the attitude of the Apostolic Fathers was very far from hostile. Their fundamental idea was the Psalmist's 'Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all!' and

me wrote to t

s and all living things which are thereupon, making no dissension, neither altering anything which He hath decreed. Moreover, the inscrutable depths of the abysses and unutterable statutes of the nether regions are constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea, gathered together by His workmanship into its reservoirs, passeth not the barriers wherewith it is surrounded; but even as He ordered it, so it doeth. For He said, "so far shalt thou come, and thy waves shall be broken within thee." The

wrote about the scenery round them in a tone of sentimentality not less astonishing, in view of the prejudic

t rather a sensitive man, thoughtful and dreamy at once, w

o sides of it are deep and precipitous ravines, and on another side the river flowing from the steep is itself a continuous and almost impassable barrier. The mountain range, with its moon-shaped windings, walls off the accessible parts of the plain. There is but one entrance, of which we are the masters. My hut is built on another point, which uplifts a lofty pinnacle on the summit, so that this plain is outspread before the gaze, and from the height I can catch a glimpse of the river flowing round, which to my fancy affords no less delight than t

for me the sweetest of all fruits, tranquillity; not only because it is free from the noises of cities, but because it is not traversed by a single visitor except the hunters, who occasionally join us. For, besides its other advantages, it also produces animals--not bears and wolves, like yours--heaven forbid! But it feeds herd

its idyllic solitude, for what we moderns would call its romantic surroundings, sylvan and rugg

hich has been transmitted to us from Greek or Roman antiquity. From the lonely Alpine hut to which Basil withdrew, the eye wanders over the humid and leafy r

ac and idyllic[5]; as Villemain says, 'These pleasant pictures, these poetic allusions, do not shew th

earthly things, he said in reply, that peace of soul must be man's chief aim, and could only be attained by separation from the world, by solitude; 'for the contemplation

compared to wandering clouds that dissolve into nothi

is the glistening sea when a settled calm doth hold it; but pleasant too it is to behold its surface ruffled by gentle breezes, and its colo

le of Zeus, is weak in comparison with Basil's words, 'If, on a clear night, you have fixed your gaze upon the beauty of the stars, and then suddenly turned to thoughts of the artist of the universe, whoever he be, who has adorned the sk

rnity: 'If the greatness of the sky is beyond human comprehensi

Nature was intensely melanchol

r birds, and from the branches brought to me sweet slumber, though my heart was well-nigh broken. And the cicadas, friends of the sun, chirped with the shrill note that issues from their breasts, and filled the whole grove with sound. A c

ot with Gregory's brooding melancholy and self-tormenting introspection. The poem goes on to compare him to a cloud t

me rest; thou wilt not a second time pass over that stream thou didst be

'Happy he who leads a lonely life, happy he who with the might

by the wind; a stormy voyage, faded grass; kingdoms and powers are waves of t

g the harmony of the whole, of wonders in heaven and in earth, and how the elements of things, though mutually

athos of J

d out the gro

he sky firm ov

he sun as a t

prings into

the path of

eauty of the ether, and lift myself to the stars and observe all their splendour, and, not staying there, but passing beyond the limits

out of the water and sees this world, he would see a world beyond; and if the nature of man could sustain the sight, he would acknowledge that this other world was the place of the true heaven and the true light and the true earth.' But even

and they should quit their dark abode to come to us, where they should immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens, should consider the vast extent of the clouds and force of the winds, should see the sun, and observe his grandeur and beauty, and also his generative power, inasmuch as day is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky, and when night has o

or a plurality of godhead. To soar upon the wings of bird, wind, or cloud, a motif which we find here in Gregory of Nyssa, and which rea

e sentimental and plaintive th

ich the clouds are onward borne, my spirit is overpowered by a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves have fallen, and the branches of the trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of their leafy adornment

iew of the opinion which Du Bois Reymond, for example, expresses: 'In antiquity, medi?val times, and in later l

ancholy, coupled with that 'delight of sorrow' which owes its name (Wo

sic writers combined such appreciation of Nature's individual traits w

he deepening of the inner life through the new faith is quite as cle

d sway, and she was treated with most unscientific contempt. For the development of feeling did not proceed in one unswerving line, but was subject to backward movements. The rosy aft

e depths which opened up for mankind with this religion of the soul, which can find no rest in its

mage, became the mother of new and great thoughts, and of a

from Gregory Nazianzen just given, ap

oetry of Homer, it was another poetry.... It was in the new form of contemplative poetry, in this sadness of man about himself, in these impulses towards God and the future, in this idealism so little known by the poets of antiquity, that the Chris

e; man's handiwork, however dazzling, was but vanity in their eyes, whereas Nature was the handiwork of

water's side. Who does not despise all the creations of art, when in the stillness of his soul he watches with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the f

says (13th of the 1st Corinthians): 'Here we see in a glass d

ul thing about this palace is, that it is not made of stone, but of far costlier material; he has not lighted up a golden candelabra, b

hought and sadness; but from them too we have notable descriptions of Nature in wh

he time of Commodus, the mixture of the heathen culture and opinions of antiquity with

forward to the shore, not hoary and foaming, but with waves gently swelling and curled. On this occasion we were agreeably amused by the varieties of its appearance, for, as we stood on the margin and dipped the soles of our feet in the water, the wave alternately struck at us, and then receding, and sliding away, seemed to swallow up itself. We saw some boys eagerly engaged in the game of throwing shells in the sea.... C?cilius said: 'All things ebb into the fountain from which they spring, and return back to their original without contriver, author, or supreme arbiter ... showers fall, winds blow, thunder bellows, and lightnings flash ... but they have no aim.' Octavius answers: 'Behold the heaven itself, how wide it is stretched out, and with what rapidity its revolutions are performed, whether in the night when studded with stars, or in the daytime when the sun ranges over it, and then you will learn with what a wonderful and divine hand the balance is held by the Supreme Moderator of all things;

confession of f

ho da

et pr

I bel

ll-em

sust

ot embrac

me, Hi

e Heaven its

rm-set earth be

enderly with

everlasting st

heart, how lar

ing when thou'r

thou wilt--Bliss

e for it--'ti

ut sound

the glow

is time was losing independent importance in men's minds, like life itself,

he hymns of the first centuries A.D., as a work of

them such profound expressions of feeling; but in man's relationship to Nature, which, one might say, supplies the colour to the painter's brush.[16] Nature appears here in the service of ideal moral powers and robbed of her independenc

us sun, Thou very dayspring, very light in all its fulness, that dost illumine the innermost recesses of the heart,' sings St Hilary in his Morning Hymn; and in another hymn, declaring himself unwo

is born again, and the new birth of the soul raises to new energy; Christ is called the true sun, th

' and again: 'The herald bird of dawn announces day, Christ the awaker calls us to life.' And in the ninth hymn: 'Let flowing river

of David, of the root of Jesse; of the eternal Fatherland where the whole ground is fr

ters, often shew a distinctly modern tone,[20] and go to prove that asceticism so deepened and intensified character that eve

tance, striving with the problems of the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of its own passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to

my fill passionately among the wild beasts, and I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves beneath the shade; and my beauty consumed away and I

t the death o

would no longer brook my carrying; yet I found no place where I could lay it down, neither in pleasa

stood 'que c'est un fatal prése

k child, and sought healing for it in

y were picked and the mother tree shed milky tears for the loss of them, that everything in heaven and earth was a pa

ism has never been more beautif

are not thy God, seek higher.' I asked the blowing breezes, and the whole expanse of air with its inhabitants made answer: 'Anaxagoras was at fault, I am not God.' I asked th

other

hey cease to give all men this message, so that they are without excuse. Sky and earth speak to the deaf Thy praises: when I love Thee, I love not beauty of form, nor r

igious. At the same time, the soothing infl

the correspondence between Ausonius, the poet of the Moselle, and Paulinus, Bishop of Nola; and

ard into Christian-Germanic times by his sentimentality and

ery and travels. Nothing in classic Roman poetry attests such an acute grasp of Nature's little secret charms as the small poem about the sunny banks of the Moselle, vine-clad and crowned by villas, and reflected in the

we learn incidentally from them that a lengthy preamble abou

n into a truly poetic appeal in No. 64, in which Ausoni

n trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth thei

t delicacy in this appeal, and we see that

mutual love, their home at Burdigala, his country-house

flower, the dog-star burns with blazing heat, Pomona bringeth not the changing scents of autumn, Aqu

der strain with a pictu

now passeth he beneath the halls of Ebromagus, now he is gliding down the stream, and now

times, is undeniable; the tone verges on the sentimentality of the

and in every way a man of fine and tender feeling. He gave him

eu to Apollo. There is a fine urbanity and humanity in his writings, but he did not, like Ausonius, love Nature for her own s

savage fierceness that makes men choose to live in lonely spots; rather, turning their eyes to the lofty stars,

friendship, 'sooner shall life disappear from my body than thy image from my heart,' he was without his quiet musing delight in Nature. For her the heathen had the clearer eye and warmer heart; the Christian bishop only acknow

n some of these the hermit was extolled with a dash of Robinson Crusoe romance, and the descriptions of natural phenomena in connection with Genes

air with sounding wings, various notes do they pour forth in soothing harmony, an

e long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had been to the Hellenic poets and t

ng it with their wings in the rush of their passage, and with flattering satisfaction their voices are heard, and I think they praise God that they were found worthy to be created; some shine in snowy white, some in purple

but, for the most part, such idyllic feeli

ree and vine, sea and spring, can give.' He summons all creation to praise the Creator--stars and seasons, hail-storm and lightni

ch shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling here and there. As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon the quiet love of mortals by night

heaven maintains eternal spring there; the tumultuous south wind does not penetrate, the clouds forsake an air which is always pure.... The soil has no need of rains to refresh it, and the plants pro

ul world ugly and narrow in comparison. 'Day is dark to their eyes, a

is letters, give many interesting pictures of the culture of his part of the fifth century. In Carm. 2 he draws a highly--coloured picture of the home of Pontius Leontas,[31] a fine country property, and paints the charms of the villa with all the art of his rhetoric and some real appreciation. The meeting of the two rivers, the Garonne and the Dordogne, in the introduction is poetical

It needs not Art; Nature has given it grace. That no artist's hand has touched it is its charm; it is no masterpiece

xury and country solitude, in his second letter to Domidius, and des

, if you have time to spare at meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding crows with th

e described a visit to the coun

o another--games, feastings, cha

thus an interesting figure in these wild times, with his Pliny-like enthusiasm fo

t important figure of the sixth century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a statesman of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his Variorium libris gives the most interesti

e native land of the sun, the claims of Rhodes to that honour being outdone.... It enjoys a translucent air, but withal so temperate, that its winters are sunny and its summers cool, and life passes there without sorrow, since hostile seasons are feared by none. Hence, too, man himself is here freer of soul than elsewhere, for this temperateness of the climate prevails in all things.... Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the m

ch in vineyards and olive w

te in the clumsy language of a decaying literature, this sixth-century

placed there for the defence of the Province of Liguria; and yet again, i

ite margins. Above rises a diadem of lofty mountains, their slopes studded with bright villas; a girdle of olives below, vineyards above, while a crest of thick chestnut woods adorns the very summit of the hills. Streams of snowy clearness dash from the hill-sides into the lake. On the eastern sid

that the writer's attitude was not mainly utilitarian. He noted the fertility of the land in wine and grain,

ng for Nature which can be compared to his. Like all the poets of this late period, his verse lacks form, is rugged and pompous, moving upon the stilts of classic reminiscences, and coining monstrous new expressions for itself; but its feeling is always sincere. It was the last gleam of a setting sun of literature that fell upon this one beneficent figure. He was born in the district of Treviso near Venice, and crossed the Alps a little before the great Lombard invasi

ity,[34] one of his longer po

nard, amomum, bring me no joy--nay, no flower delights my heart. That I may see thee, I pass hovering through each cloud, and my love teaches my wandering eyes to pierce the mist, and lo! in dread fear I ask the stormy winds what they have to tell me of my lord. Before th

the inner life through Christianity (we almost hear Christ's words about the 'great sinner'), and the intimate friendship

is poems to them, which were often letters and notes written off-hand, are full of affection and gratitude (he was, by the way, a gourmet, and the ladies made allowance for this weakness in dainty gifts), and form an enduring witness of a pure and most touching friendship. They contain many pretty sketches of Nature and delicate offerings of flowers. In one he said: 'If the season brought white lilies or blossomed in red roses, I w

own, and though thou flee and hide thyself here but for a few short days, that month is longer than the whole hurryi

e comes out

gs are only just beginning to shoot up from the furrows, yet I to-day will reap my harvest in seeing thee once more. To-day do I gather in the fr

the classics: for instance, in Theocritus, when he praises Nais, whose beaut

thee, I am ne'er satisfied. Though the heavens be bright, though the c

this friendship is the poem

istible power of the description, the spectacle of the freshly open wounds, the sympathy in the consuming sorrow of a frien

ternal; now ages pass, and I never hear a word from thee. A whole world now lies betwixt those who loved each other and who of old were never separate. If others, for pity alone, cross the Alps to seek their lost slaves, wherefore am I forgotten?--I who am bound to thee by blood? Where art thou? I ask the wind as it sighs, the clouds as they pass--at least some bird might bring me news of thee. If the holy enclosure of this monastery did not restra

ut the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts. She left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where

ns, woods, rivers, and fields resound. Art thou silent, Gelesiuntha? Answer as to

asked the very breezes, but of he

ster in description of scenery. His lengthy descriptions of spring are mostly on

r leafy heads towards the sky, the shady tree renews its verdant foliage, the lovely vine is swelling with budding branches,

n

h shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour

ld winter, and a ho

roads, longing for shade and cool drinks. At last the rustle of a crystal stream is heard, h

teworthy places include some on

, sole ruler of the realm from which the fish are banished, is heard in the lonely swamp;

sort, written with little

on his journey by the Moselle from Metz to Andernach on the Rhine. Here he shews a keen eye and fine taste for wide views and high mountains, as well as for the minuti? of scenery, wi

ch directly succeeded his own, when the Roman world already lay in ruins, but to the fully

ly modern and under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with all its depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde is, as it were, a symbol of the blending of the two e

e classic models, and culture was declining to its fall. In Gaul, as in Spain and Italy,

iastically imitated. Latin poetry of the Middle Ages lived upon recollections of the past, or tried to raise itself again by its he

ng for Nature shewed a correspo

'concerning the existence of things,' relied on Roman models no less than Alcuin, who had formed himself on the pattern of

Cell caught the idyl

retirement's

t farewell, thy

by smiling w

, shaken by th

on oft my m

o, their healt

the fertile m

ear, by flowery

meads the crystal

ets the joyfu

ith the apple

ily joined, the

verdant glades At dawn his

attunes the n

the world with idyllic comfort in their surroundings. If their fundamental feeling was worship and praise of the Creator, their constant outdoor work, which, during the first centuries, was st

ring.[38] It described the time when the cuckoo sings high in the branches, grass clothes earth with many tints,

as visible, as in so many of his contemporaries. With a vivid and artistic pen he described the wood and park of Aachen and the Kaiser's brilliant

ughtful romantic inclination' for the eternal feminine, for the beautiful women with splendid ornaments, and necks shining

nus for his models, just as they had taken Virgil, and Virgi

nd the mid-day glow of the sun, while the boy praises Him whose songs the creatures follow as once they followed Orpheus with his lute; a

any rate, he described in a very superior way, and, like Fortunatus, with some humour, the draining of the Larte at Le M

often treated, became famous in the

d pharmaceutical handling of plants, there is a good deal

n digging his fields in spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up by the mo

and there which is not

nd throws out short umbels, and passes the breath of the wind and the rays of the su

n

se rightly extol the shining lily, whose whiteness is as the whitenes

dbern (100 hexameters) he described the dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and other foes. In those days the difficulties of the road excluded all interest in mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in Sapphic

rün, who, in a postscript to the Conclusio des Martyrologium, gives

hers of the Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine's deep faith and devout admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a thing of the past. Feeling for Nature--sentiment

he decline breaking o

German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and Mersen (842), b

ist, stand out alone. In the Heliand the stor

d, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water battled together; yet, obedient to th

, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the symbolic so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we have a mor

ry angry at

ld northern feeling for Nature; still more the

the greatest m

was no earth n

gave no light,

n, nor the

and the 'glorious sea' shew j

are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery. The

dark brown covers the mountains.' 'The sky is the fortress of the storm, the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.' '

g the characteristic features of eit

ve throughout, and seld

, in highly-coloured and sympathetic descriptions like

ust before the twelfth century, an

ividual differences and peculiarities, the virtues and failings so closely allied to its own. It was a naive 'hand-and-glove' footing between man and the creatures, which attribu

s prepared by the symbolic and allegorical way of looki

n them man, figured: thus plant life suggested the flower of the root of Jesse, foretold by Isaiah, red flowers the Saviour's wounds, and so forth. In the earliest Christian times, a remarkab

le categories of animals were turned into allegories of the truths of salvation.[41] The cleverest fables of animals were in Isengrimen, published in Ghent about 1140 in Latin verse--the story of the sick lion and his cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such fables did not remain special to German national li