Catullus, the poet contemporary with Lucretius, is too much absorbed in love and friendship, finds too exciting an interest in the society of man, to give much time to Nature. In his most original poems, or at least those in which he most speaks out his feelings, Nature holds little, almost no place. Two poems refer to his villa at Tibur, with, however, little mention of any rural pleasures connected with it. The well-known lines on his return to his home at Sirmio, on the Lago di Garda, for all their wonderful charm, breathe more of the love of home and rest after long voyaging than of enjoyment in Nature for her own sake. His more elaborate and artistic poems contain some beautiful natural images and similes, expressed with that unstudied felicity and clear sense of beauty which distinguished him. But they do not come to more than side glances by the way, as he hurries on to his human theme. It has, however, been remarked, that while to Lucretius, to Horace, even to Virgil, the sea is a thing of dread rather than of admiration, from which they shrank as a treacherous creature, Catullus felt the grandeur of its immensity, and rejoiced in the laughter of the waves in calm, and in their changing colors beneath the storm. Germans have written learned books, some to maintain, others to deny, that the ancient Greeks and Romans had any feeling for Nature, or, as the phrase goes, were inspired by the sentiment of Nature. Schiller has gone as far as to deny that Homer had any more caring for Nature than he had for the garment, the shield, the armor, which he describes with equal relish. In the face of such an assertion we have but to read a few passages from Homer above cited, and innumerable others like them. No doubt the ancients had not that intimate, delicate, dwelling sympathy for Nature which we call the modern feeling. But there is hardly a tone of sentiment which Nature in modern times has evoked, of which some faint prelude at least might not be found among them. Passages from the dialogue, and especially from the choruses, of Sophocles and Euripides, might, had we time, have been cited, which speak of natural objects with almost as much fondness as though they had been written yesterday.