These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the Golden Age. A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure on these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness, and the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties of uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we fancy we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we nave ourselves enjoyed. Often do I fly from the city and seek the deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe and console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town; enraptured, I give up my whole soul to the contemplation of Nature, and feel, at such moments, richer than an Utopian monarch, and happier than a shepherd of the Golden Age. This is a true picture of the time! Man knew that he was sick, and fled from town and his fellows into solitude, there to dream himself back to a happier past, and revel in the purity and innocence, the healing breath, of forest and field. The magic of moonlight began to be felt. Mirtilla perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams.... Mirtilla stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly on the old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these towering clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture! From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and examine the various flowers and herbs and their little inhabitants; when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry heavens!... Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the approach of morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams of moonlight; and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us breathe out in broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah! what inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the transports of the tenderest love. Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards Nature.