Nature is also considered as inspiring to morality and virtue. Gay, in a fable already quoted from, says that Nature can make men “moral” and “good,” if they will learn her lessons. Thomson meditates on Nature because thence he hopes to learn lessons of morality. Mallet says that Nature inspires the soul with “virtuous raptures” and prompts man to forsake sin-born vanities and low pursuits. Akenside’s chief theme is the power of Nature to lead men from petty interests and hurried, sordid lives into a beneficent and ordered activity of the soul. Cooper ascribes to “every natural scene a moral power.” John Langhorne says that the sweet sensations of Nature move the “springs of virtue’s love,” and have a “moral use,” and that religion, fled from books, can be found in Nature whence we first drew both our knowledge and our virtue. Beattie says that the charms of Nature work “the soul’s eternal health.” They inspire love and gentleness. They incite to high living, and the man who neglects them can hardly hope to be forgiven. A pervading thought in Cowper’s poems is his moral and spiritual indebtedness to Nature. Wordsworth not infrequently indicates his belief that the spirit of Nature consciously blesses man. This idea is sometimes found in the transition poetry, as in Hamilton’s “Contemplation,” and especially in Akenside and Cowper who represent Nature as making the happiness of man “her dear and only aim.” So far we have discussed the knowledge of Nature and the feeling toward it rather than its use in literature. That this knowledge was abundant and varied, that this feeling was enthusiastic and often deeply reverential, may, perhaps, pass without further question. But a different problem presents itself when we ask what literary use the eighteenth-century poet made of Nature. It must be conceded at the outset that many references to natural facts are not literary at all. In Mallet’s “Excursion,” for instance, his journey through stellar spaces renders frequent mention of the sky and stars inevitable, but the references might as well be to macadamized roads. His purpose is merely to get from one point of vantage to another. Such brief, cold, unpicturesque use of details for purposes of transition are really non-literary. In any tabular statement of an author’s work some discount must be made to allow for this mechanical use of Nature, and in certain authors, as notably Mallet and Young, the discount is large. Another non-literary use of Nature is in the catalogue or summary. John Scott gives the extreme example of this unorganized accumulation of details. The instinct of the artist is wanting. The poet does not even attempt to make Nature a part of a well-fused literary product. He is encumbered by his material. He crowds his canvas. His full and realistic presentation is without artistic reservations. His record is prompted simply by interest in the separate facts. No literary purpose determines his selection or rejection of detail.