shew proof of a deepening effect of Nature on the human
spirit was Dante.

Dante and Petrarch elaborated the Hellenistic feeling for Nature;
hence the further course of the Renaissance displayed all its
elements, but with increased subjectivity and individuality.

No one, since the days of Hellenism, had climbed mountains for the
sake of the view--Dante was the first to do it. And although, in
ranging heaven, earth, hell, and paradise in the _Divina Commedia_,
he rarely described real Nature, and then mostly in comparisons; yet,
as Humboldt pointed out, how incomparably in a few vigorous lines he
wakens the sense of the morning airs and the light on the distant sea
in the first canto of Purgatorio:

The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour,
Which fled before it,-so that from afar
I recognized the trembling of the sea.

And how vivid this is:

The air
Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain:
And to the fosses came all that the land
Contain'd not, and, as mightiest streams are wont,
To the great river with such headlong sweep
Rush'd, that naught stayed its course.

Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
With lively greenness the new-springing day
Attempered, eager now to roam and search
Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank;
Along the champaign leisurely my way
Pursuing, o'er the ground that on all sides
Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air,
That intermitted never, never veered,
Smote on my temples gently, as a wind
Of softest influence, at which the sprays,
Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part
Where first the holy mountain casts his shade;
Yet were not so disordered; but that still
Upon their top the feather'd quiristers
Applied their wonted art, and with full joy
Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill
Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays
Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south. Already had my steps,
Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood
Transported me, I could not ken the place
Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path
Was bounded by a rill, which to the left
With little rippling waters bent the grass
That issued from its brink.

and this of the heavenly Paradise:

I looked,
And, in t