One of the interesting characteristics of the love of Nature in the eighteenth century is a delight in wide views. What had in the classical period “tired the travelling eye,” with the dawning of the new spirit gave satisfaction. It was in accord with the mental revolt against close boundaries of any sort. From the day when John Philips ventured to express some pleasure in the view from a hill, and Gay climbed Cotton Hill to raise his mind nearer heaven, and Dyer spent days in studying with an artist’s eye the colors and forms of the view from Grongar Hill, to the time when Beattie eagerly climbed the rugged steeps of Scottish mountains so that he might see the morning mists rolling and tumbling over the rough hills beneath him, do we find this pronounced delight in wide views. Even poets who show no great love for mountains, as Thomson, Mallet, Collins, the Wartons, Langhorne, Mickle, and John Scott, and even poets of confessedly tame scenery as Cowper, love “green heights” and extended prospects. To the expression of this feeling Amory and Mrs. Radcliffe, Brown, Young, and Pennant make large contributions. This feeling shows itself also in gardening. The cutting-down of tall hedges, the opening-up of vistas, were a result of the change of taste and a contribution to it. We have seen that during the classical poetry the skies in favor were cloudless and that of all sky phenomena the rainbow excited most attention. In the transition poetry we find much of this love of fair summer skies and expressed sometimes with a new freshness as when Dyer wishes nothing above his head but “the roof on which the gods do tread,” or when Ramsay looks with joy upon “the lift’s unclouded blue,” or when the clear gladness of heaven shines down from the lovely skies of Blake. But on the whole, references to the serene day-time sky are conventional. It is another illustration of the fact that such aspects of Nature as were already known and had come to be spoken of after a set fashion were slow to be emancipated into a new phraseology. Better work is done in describing what Coleridge calls the “goings-on” of the sky. Thomson knew the sky in all its phases. Parnell describes well the airy tumult of clouds after a storm. Mallet has one or two rather effective studies of a stormy sky. One of Beattie’s best descriptions is of a shifting cloudy sky on a windy autumn day, and he has other effective cloud studies. But taken in the mass the material is scanty and not of great value. It was Wordsworth and Shelley who first gave adequate expression to the mysterious and varied charm of the day-time sky.