asle in narrating an explosion there, glimpses of
Walsingham and Canterbury in his colloquy on pilgrimages--that is
almost all that can be culled from his works about the places he
visited. When he came to Oxford, Merton tower had been gladdening
men's eyes for scarcely fifty years, and the tower of Magdalen had
just risen to rival its beauty; Duke Humfrey's Library and the
Divinity School were still in their first glory, and the monks of St.
Frideswide were contemplating transforming the choir of their church
into the splendid Perpendicular such as Bray had achieved at
Westminster and Windsor for Henry VII. But Erasmus tells us nothing of
what he saw; only what he heard and said. This lack of enjoyment in
Nature, lack of interest in topography and archaeology, was probably
personal to him. It was not so with some of his friends. More and
Ellenbog, as we have seen, could feel the beauty in the night

'Of cloudless climes and starry skies'.

Aleander in a diary records the exceptional brilliance of the planet
Jupiter at the end of September 1513. He pointed it out to his pupils
in the College de la Marche at Paris, and together they remarked that
its rays were strong enough to cast a shadow. Ellenbog enjoyed the
country, and Luther also was susceptible to its charms. Budaeus had a
villa to which he delighted to escape from Paris, and where he laid
out a fine estate. Beatus Rhenanus after thirty years retained
impressions of Louis XII's gardens at Tours and Blois and of a
'hanging garden' in Paris; and could write a detailed account of the
Fugger palace at Augsburg with its art treasures. Or think of the
painters. The Flemings of the fifteenth century had learnt from the
Italians to fit into their pictures landscapes seen through doors or
windows, gleaming in sunshine, green and bright. Van Eyck's 'Adoration
of the Lamb' is set in beautiful scenery; grassy slopes and banks
studded with flowers, soft swelling hills, and blue distances crowned
with the towers he knew so well, Utrecht and Maestricht and Cologne
and Bruges. Even in the interiors of Durer and Holbein, where no
window opens to let in the view, Nature is not left wholly
unrepresented; for flowers often stand upon the tables, carnations and
lilies and roses, arranged with taste and elegance. On the whole the
enjoyment of Nature formed but a small part in the outlook of that age
as compared with the prominence it receives in modern literature and
life; but