The drama is the last form of poetry to which we would turn in hope of finding rural objects and scenery described. Yet it is astonishing how much of this kind can be culled from a careful search through Shakespeare’s plays. Indeed it has been remarked how much of out-of-doors life there is in Shakespeare’s dramas, how much of the action is carried on under the open sky. No doubt the pressure of human action and emotion is too absorbing to admit of detailed description—in most cases of more than passing allusions. Yet engrossed though he is with stirring events and thrilling emotions and powerful human characters, it is wonderful how many are the side-glances that he and his characters cast at the Nature that surrounds them. And these glances are like everything else in him, rapid, vivid, and intense. As has been said, natural scenes “he so paints by occurrences, by allusions, by the emotions of his characters, that we seem to see them before our eyes, and to live in them.” There is hardly one of his plays in which the season and the scene is not flashed upon the mind by a single stroke more vividly than it could be by the most lengthened description:— “Lady! by yonder silver moon I swear, That tips with silver all the fruit-tree tops.” How these few words shed round us all the loveliness of the Italian night! Or that other where the moonshine of the warm summer night brightens the last scenes of the “Merchant of Venice,” and calls up, as only moonlight can, all wild and fascinating memories of legend and romance:— “_Lorenzo._ The moon shines bright: In such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise; in such a night Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night. “_Jessica._ In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew; And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself, And ran dismay’d away. “_Lorenzo._ In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love To come again to Carthage.”