The tendency to isolate Nature and to regard it as a self-subsisting thing cut off from other existence, has been strong ever since man came to be clearly conscious of his own distinctness from the world. In this, as in every other realm of thought, progress is slow; it requires long ages to get to the right mental attitude. Among the ethnic races, at least, there were first the two periods already noticed—one in which man crouched in blind abject terror in presence of the elements; another marked by that brighter Nature-worship embodied in the Aryan mythology, which, though past its prime, was still surviving when the Homeric poems were composed. Then succeeded the time when, on the one hand, the mind of man separated itself from the world and asserted its distinct existence; and when, on the other, the thought of Deity, under the guidance of reflection and philosophy, gradually extracted itself from the visible appearances in which it had been so long imbedded. When this great change had made itself felt, and when, at the same time, out-of-door life gave place to life in cities, Nature in a great measure lost its hold on man’s regards, and retired into the background as a lifeless mechanical thing, without interest or beauty or any intimacy with man. The material world, indeed, had still its utilitarian value. It ministered to man’s bodily wants in the thousand ways that immemorial usage handed down, and which science in recent times has so greatly multiplied. If the refreshing presence of Nature still blended unawares with the animal spirits of men, and cheered them when they were weary, yet the multitudes cast on it no imaginative regards, and cared nothing for the poetry which mediates between the eye and the heart. This seems a true account of the mental attitude of the great civilized communities, down even to recent times. And, notwithstanding the great movement toward Nature which is said to characterize this modern era, one may well doubt whether the sentiment has really penetrated the hearts of even the most cultivated men. Such things must always be difficult to gauge. Yet one cannot but sometimes wonder, if from the modern love of Nature, and the much talk about it, there could be deducted all that may be set down to love of change, imitation, fashion, and the desire to meet the expectations of refined society, how much would remain of feeling that was native, genuine, and spontaneous. A few, we may believe, there have been in every age, and more perhaps in this than in former ages, to whom, in spite of the prosaic atmosphere that surrounded them, Nature was something more than a dead machine, something even worthy of affection. Poets, too, were born from age to age, favorite children of “Gaudentes rure Camœnæ,”