erman climate, had imbibed the German love of
Nature; as if its scenery had bewitched him like the German maiden
whom he compared to roses and lilies in his song.

Many parts of his poetical epistles are in the same tone, and we
learn incidentally from them that a lengthy preamble about weather
and place belonged to letter-writing even then.[23]

Feeling for Nature and love of his friend are interwoven into a truly
poetic appeal in No. 64, in which Ausonius complains that Paulinus
does not answer his letters:

Rocks give answer to the speech of man, and his words striking
against the caves resound, and from the groves cometh the echo of
his voice. The cliffs of the coast cry out, the rivers murmur,
the hedge hums with the bees that feed upon it, the reedy banks
have their own harmonious notes, the foliage of the pine talks in
trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east
falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the
Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the
air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its
hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their
note.... Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the
Pyrenees taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to
keep silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the
voices of Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate
regions, and wander silent in the rounded heights of the Alpine
range.

The sounds of Nature are detailed with great delicacy in this appeal,
and we see that the Alps are referred to as desolate regions.

In another letter (25) he reminded his friend of their mutual love,
their home at Burdigala, his country-house with its vine-slopes,
fields, woods, etc., and went on:

Yet without thee no year advanceth with grateful change of
season; the rainy spring passeth without flower, the dog-star
burns with blazing heat, Pomona bringeth not the changing scents
of autumn, Aquarius pours forth his waters and saddens winter.
Pontius, dear heart, seest thou what thou hast done?

Closing in the same tender strain with a picture of his hope
fulfilled:

Now he leaves the snowy towns of the Iberians, now he holds the
fields of the Tarbellians, now passeth he beneath the halls of
Ebromagus, now he is gliding down the stream, and now he knocketh
at