n that my eyes have seen many gladsome sights. I walked
across the flowering meadows and listened to the heavenly harps of the
little birds praising their gentle and loving Creator so that the woods
echoed with their songs." And, more compassionate even than St. Francis:
"I will say nothing of the children of man; but the misery and sorrow
of all the beasts and little birds, and all created things, is well-nigh
breaking my heart; and having no power to help them, I sighed, and
prayed to the Most High, Most Merciful Lord, that He would deliver
them." His description of a paradisean meadow sounds like the
description of a picture by Fra Angelico: "Now behold with your own eyes
the heavenly meadow! Lo! What summer joy! Behold the kingdom of sweet
May, the valley of all true joy! Glad eyes are gazing into glad eyes!
Hark to the harps and fiddles, the singing and laughter! Young men and
maidens are leading the dance! Love without sorrow shall reign for
ever...." etc. There is a picture, drawn by this same Suso, representing
the journey of man through life, his departure from God and his return.
In this picture the path of humanity is renunciation and asceticism;
death flourishes his scythe above the heads of a dancing couple, and
underneath is written: "This is earthly love; its end is sorrow"; to
such an extent was this sincere and sensitive man under the influence of
the traditional hatred of the world which Eckhart, his great master, had
completely overcome.

Provencals and Italians sang the delight of spring, and the German
minnesingers greeted it as the deliverer from all the hardships of the
severe winter; with the latter it was more a childish delight in the
open-air life which had again become possible, after the long
imprisonment of winter, than pure joy in beauty. But some of the German
epic poems, "Tristan and Isolde," for instance, contain genuine, sincere
descriptions of sylvan beauty. The student of art, especially the German
art of the Renascence, cannot help being struck by the extraordinary
love with which quite insignificant objects of nature, such as a bird,
or a flower, are treated. The familiar things of every-day life were in
this way brought into connection with solemn biblico-historical
subjects.

There is no doubt that at all times a certain keen perception of the
beauty of nature has been inherent in some favoured individuals; but the
universally accepted opinion that only the supernal was really