nd to be re-echoed through the world to the end of time!

It was St. Pierre who first discovered the poverty of language
with regard to picturesque descriptions. In his earliest work, the
often-quoted "Voyages," he complains, that the terms for describing
nature are not yet invented. "Endeavour," he says, "to describe a
mountain in such a manner that it may be recognised. When you have
spoken of its base, its sides, its summit, you will have said all!
But what variety there is to be found in those swelling, lengthened,
flattened, or cavernous forms! It is only by periphrasis that all this
can be expressed. The same difficulty exists for plains and valleys.
But if you have a palace to describe, there is no longer any difficulty.
Every moulding has its appropriate name."

It was St. Pierre's glory, in some degree, to triumph over this
dearth of expression. Few authors ever introduced more new terms into
descriptive writing: yet are his innovations ever chastened, and in good
taste. His style, in its elegant simplicity, is, indeed, perfection. It
is at once sonorous and sweet, and always in harmony with the sentiment
he would express, or the subject he would discuss. Chenier might well
arm himself with "Paul and Virginia," and the "Chaumiere Indienne," in
opposition to those writers, who, as he said, made prose unnatural, by
seeking to elevate it into verse.

The "Etudes de la Nature" embraced a thousand different subjects, and
contained some new ideas on all. It is to the honour of human nature,
that after the uptearing of so many sacred opinions, a production like
this, revealing the chain of connection through the works of Creation,
and the Creator in his works, should have been hailed, as it was, with
enthusiasm.

His motto, from his favourite poet Virgil, "Taught by calamity, I pity
the unhappy," won for him, perhaps many readers. And in its touching
illusions, the unhappy may have found suspension from the realities of
life, as well as encouragement to support its trials. For, throughout,
it infuses admiration of the arrangements of Providence, and a desire
for virtue. More than one modern poet may be supposed to have drawn a
portion of his inspiration, from the "Etudes." As a work of science it
contains many errors. These, particularly his theory of the tides,(*)
St. Pierre maintained to the last, and so eloquently, that it was said
at the time, to be impossible to unite less reason with more logic.

(*) O