XXIII. LETTER XXIII. THE NATURAL SCENERY OF THE EARTH MADE TO BE EVERY MY DEAR SON, LETTER OUR considerations on the surface which was established at the Deluge, for the subsistence and habitation of mankind and of the rest of animated nature, have been directed to the effects and utilities which have been derived from it, in producing and maintaining the present course of nature, the social economy of mankind, and their general convenience and comfort. But as we contemplate the aspect of all that surrounds us, we can read most legibly in the expanded Volume of Nature before us, that another principle of the Divine mind has been in liberal activity for our benefit; and this is that affectionate regard for His human race, which the Scriptures term the love of God for man, which far beyond what we term reasoning or philosophic philanthropy, or that moral principle which contents itself with seeking the welfare of its human objects. He has not been satisfied with doing us good, and providing largely for our necessities and well-being; His feeling towards us has been more kind and endearing. He has been as solicitous to give us pleasure in his various creations, as well as food, comfort and safety. He has, therefore, enlarged His plan and contrivances, to add multiplied and diversified means of easy and continual enjoyment, beyond our goes XXIII. bodily gratifications; purely to excite pleasurable LETTER sensation in us, and to make us happy, while He sustained and blessed us with all that our daily wants require. In the former letters, the operation of this principle of the Divine love for mankind, was brought to your notice, in the remarks on the floral beauties of creation, and on the rich fruits which His vegetable bounty has provided so numerously for us. Its activity is not less visible in His arrangements, configuration and investiture of the present surface of our earth. He has so managed these dispositions of it, that the natural scenery, which it presents to us, is in every region expanding around us a continual succession of visual beauties, which excite the mind in every country to an exhilarating delight. He has so shaped and distributed the masses, rocks, hills, valleys, mountains and plains of our earth, and so clothed them with plants and trees, that their appearances at due intervals, and in ever-varying succession, are always cheering and interesting to the human eye. It is by the deliberate and skilful placing and forming them into the fit outlines and figures, and with the due mutual relations, colors and contrasts, that they raise within us as we approach them, those intellectual emotions, to which we attach the terms sublime and beautiful, picturesque and charming, wild, interesting and elegant, with many other epithets, that mark the gladdening sensations and pleasing sympathies, which we experience from them. Every one feels effects of this sort, who looks around him at the natural scenery of the country in which he resides, or through which he may be travelling. Whatever be the region and quarter of the globe that XXIII. LETTER he traverses, whether in the torrid, the temperate or even the frigid zone, still his eye is struck with views and prospects, which animate and please him. The variety of the local causes of these impressions is infinite; but the intellectual effect is universal and unceasing. Beauty and grandeur, the admirable, the interesting, the welcomed awful, the attractive strange, the gratifying peculiar, something that elevates, or sooths, or captivates, or pleasingly excites; something that causes a feeling of interior delight, is perpetually occurring to him as he moves over the territorial surface, whatever clime he may be visiting. The hand of Nature, or rather the creative mind of its Divine Maker and Master, is ever placing before him, in tasteful combinations and successions, pictures of natural scenery and phenomena, which exhilarate or astonish him; and which have suggested all the beauties of the artificial landscapes which poets have sung, and which the genius of our imitating arts has so captivatingly painted. So much contrast of a different description is intermingled, as makes what is pleasing more pleasurable, and prevents the gratification from becoming too uniform and satiating and from this varying intermixture, even the disagreeable ceases to be so, as it always enhances our relish for what is otherwise, and increases our desire to meet with something more interesting. The result of the combined whole is, that travelling is always delightful, and change of scene a continual recreation to the mind; since we can go nowhere, without feeling gratifying emotions and sensations to be rising within us, from the new places we gaze upon, whatever be the district to which our bodily movement may take us. XXIII. Impressions so perpetual and universal as these, LETTER can never be individual imaginations only. They must arise from local and beheld realities; from external things actually subsisting, of such a nature and character, and with such relations and associations, as to cause the feelings and perceptions to occur to us, which we so generally experience from them. But for effects like these to be so constant, there must have been a correspondent plan, construction and arrangement of what thus causes them; and these must have been designed and made, with foreseen anticipations of their effect, and with due adaptations to our nervous sensitivities, for the express purpose of exciting in our spirit, thro and by these, the emotions and impressions which we are conscious of from them. These creative provisions are not of one sort only. The pleasure is not of one kind merely, no single charm. The scenes and objects which produce it, are exceedingly multifarious and diversified. They may be mentioned by the enumeration of thousands, without our reaching their amount. The invention which has contrived, and the condescending goodness which has executed, what it designed, must have had no limit. They must have been studiously devised and elaborately produced; and with generous desire to multiply our gratifications by very numerous diversity, for they are as varied and as exuberant, as the results are universally and individually interesting. Yet all are perpetually accomplishing their appointed end. Every form and diversity are, in all regions, followed by the assigned result. One generation dies, and new ones succeed; but nature and its beauties know no mortality. They create the same pleasures in every XXIII. LETTER series of our population. Indeed time rather increases than diminishes the delight; for as the mind improves, it becomes more sensitive to this intellectual enjoyment; and nature's enlarging productivity augments the size and abundance of her vegetating scenery. The immensity of the provision, thus lavishly made for our gratification, may be inferred by us if we recollect, what a vast surface the Deity had to cover and to adorn, by this pleasure-giving beneficence— a globe of 24,000 miles in circumference! What a prodigious area of superficies does this present to us! Yet over all this, He has not only placed everywhere the necessary and the useful, but also the agreeable and the alluring, the grand, the beautiful, the striking, the ever-interesting, and, in many parts, even what enchants and enraptures. We all feel this, but we do not sufficiently remember it, with reference to Him as the Designer, as well as the Giver of it. We do not advert to the surprising fact, that He has planned and contrived it; and that He provided it on purpose to be a continual source of enjoyment and happiness to us; and to be also promotive of, and to be accompanied by, great intellectual improvement and moral benefit. As these are the effects resulting from them, we cannot err in saying, that these were the motives and principles, on which He devised and formed them. Admirable and gracious was the plan! Admirable and felicitating and ameliorating have been its execution and results! But it will be better to let others speak for themselves, instead of our indulging in any verbal encomium. Let us inquire what travellers and navigators have felt, and found, and described external nature |