There are, however, as was said above, other feelings expressed in Roman poetry, more akin to modern sympathies. In no other branch of ancient literature is so much prominence given to the enjoyment of Nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows, tastes, and pursuits of the individual. The gravity and austerity of the old Roman life, and the predominance of public over private interest in the best days of the Republic, tended to repress, rather than to foster, the birth of these new modes of emotion. They are like the flower of that more luxuriant but less stately Italian life which spread itself abroad under the shadow of Roman institutions, and came to a rapid maturity after her conquests had brought to Rome the accumulated treasures of the world, and left to her more fortunate sons ample leisure to enjoy them. The love of natural scenery and of country life is certainly more prominently expressed in Roman than in Greek poetry. Homer, indeed, among all the poets of antiquity, presents the most vivid and true description of the outward world; and the imagination of Pindar and the Attic dramatists appears to have been strongly, though indirectly, affected both by the immediate aspect and by the invisible power of Nature. Thucydides and Aristophanes testify to the enjoyment which the Athenians found in the ease and abundance of their country life, and to the affection with which they clung to the old religious customs and associations connected with it. The conscious enjoyment of Nature as a prominent motive of poetry first appears in the Alexandrian era. The great poets of earlier times were too deeply penetrated by the thought of the mystery and the grandeur in human life, to dwell much on the spectacle of the outward world. Though their delicate sense of beauty was unconsciously cherished and refined by the air which they breathed, and the scenes by which they were surrounded, yet they do not, like the Roman poets, yield to the passive pleasures derived from contemplating the aspect of the natural world; nor do they express the happiness of passing out of the tumult of the city into the peaceful security of the country. The difference between the two nations in social temper and customs is connected with this difference in their aesthetic susceptibility. The spirit in which a Greek enjoyed his leisure, was one phase of his sociability, his communicativeness, his constant passion for hearing and telling something new,--a disposition which made the [Greek: lesche] a favourite resort so early as the time of Homer, and which is seen still characterising the most typical representatives of the race in the days of St. Paul. The Roman statesman, on the other hand, prized his _otium_ as the healthy repose after strenuous exertion. The chief relaxation to his proud and self-dependent temper consisted in being alone, or at ease with his household and his intimate friends. This desire for rest and