“Natural scenery had been hitherto only used as a background to the picture of human life. It now (that is, in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century) began to take a much larger place in poetry, and, after a time, grew to occupy a distinct place of its own apart from man. The best natural description we have before the time of Pope is that of two Puritans, Marvell and Milton. But the first poem devoted to natural description appeared while Pope was yet alive, in the very midst of a vigorous town poetry. It was the “Seasons,” 1726-30; and it is curious, remembering what I have said about the peculiar turn of the Scotch for natural description, that it was the work of James Thomson, a Scotchman. He described the scenery and country-life of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. He wrote with his eye upon their scenery, and, even when he wrote of it in his room, it was with “a recollected love.” The descriptions were too much like catalogues, the very fault of the previous Scotch poets; and his style was always heavy, and often cold, but he was the first poet who led the English people into that new world of nature in poetry, which has moved and enchanted us in the works of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson, but which was entirely impossible for Pope to understand. The impulse Thomson gave was soon followed.” In our own day such poetic descriptions of Nature have burst the bonds of metre altogether, and filled many a splendid page of poetic or imaginative prose. Many instances of this will occur to every one. Preëminent among these are Mr. Ruskin’s elaborate word-pictures of natural scenery. But of all poetic description of Nature, it may be said that if it is to reach any high level it cannot proceed calmly and unexcitedly after the manner of an inventory. No eye can see deeply into the meaning of Nature unless it has also looked as deeply into the recesses of the human heart, and felt the full gravity of man’s life and destiny. It is only when seen over against these that Nature renders back her profounder tones. VII. There is another way in which the poet deals with the external world,—when he enters into the life and the movement of Nature by a kind of imaginative sympathy, and brings it home to us by one stroke, flashing upon our hearts by one touch, one inspired line, a sense of the inner life of things, and a conviction that he has been allowed for a moment to penetrate into their secret. This, which has been called, in a special way, the interpretative power of Poetry, is that in which it reaches its highest function, and exercises one of its finest offices of mediation between the soul of man and Nature.