here, at home, a taste for those higher works of Fancy, which, while
they seek to elevate and strengthen the understanding, instruct and
purify the heart. It is in this character that the Tale of "Paul and
Virginia" ranks pre-eminent. [Prepared from an edition published by
Porter & Coates, Philadelphia, U.S.A.]




MEMOIR OF BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE

Love of Nature, that strong feeling of enthusiasm which leads to
profound admiration of the whole works of creation, belongs, it may be
presumed, to a certain peculiarity of organization, and has, no doubt,
existed in different individuals from the beginning of the world. The
old poets and philosophers, romance writers, and troubadours, had all
looked upon Nature with observing and admiring eyes. They have most of
them given incidentally charming pictures of spring, of the setting sun,
of particular spots, and of favourite flowers.

There are few writers of note, of any country, or of any age, from
whom quotations might not be made in proof of the love with which
they regarded Nature. And this remark applies as much to religious and
philosophic writers as to poets,--equally to Plato, St. Francois de
Sales, Bacon, and Fenelon, as to Shakespeare, Racine, Calderon, or
Burns; for from no really philosophic or religious doctrine can the love
of the works of Nature be excluded.

But before the days of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Buffon, and Bernardin
de St. Pierre, this love of Nature had not been expressed in all its