In Dr. Moore’s “Zeluco” (1786) neither the hero himself, that “finished model of depravity,” nor any of the characters associated with him, show any knowledge of the existence of any world outside their own intrigues and counter-intrigues. Mrs. Inchbald’s “A Simple Story” (1791) is a study of true and false education. There is in it no word concerning Nature. The same may be said of her “Nature and Art,” published in 1796. Godwin’s story, “Caleb Williams” (1794), has one brief, conventional description of a sunrise. This ignoring of Nature seems the more surprising in Godwin since his next novel, published ten years later, “Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling,” is full of the wild scenery of Wales and is really the study of a character made sensitive by early and constant communion with Nature. But this novel would carry us into the next century. Another novel of some repute toward the close of the century is Robert Bage’s “Hermsprong, or Man as He Is Not” (1796). It was read chiefly for its political bias toward the popular democratical doctrines. The scene is laid chiefly in the country and there are occasional pleasant bits of description. They are unimportant, but the book cannot be dismissed without a reference to the hero who was compelled, by lack of funds, to seek a country retreat, and who fortified his failing resolution to leave the beloved city by quoting Thomson’s “Seasons.” The two authors who first made extensive use of Nature in fiction are Mrs. Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. Mrs. Smith shows in her novels and poems a really ardent enjoyment, though seldom a close knowledge, of Nature. She indulges in long and animated descriptions of places of which she has only vaguely heard and the result is sometimes as amazing as the scenes in “Vathek.” In “The Old Manor House” (1793), her best work, a part of the scene is laid in the northern United States and Canada. Here is her idea of spring in that region: The forest in only a few days after the severest weather, which had buried the whole country in snow, burst into bloom, and presented, beneath the tulip tree and the magnolia, a more brilliant variety of flowers than art can collect in the most cultivated European garden. The following is a description of Canada on the banks of the St. Lawrence, “a very few days” after the severest winter weather: