d. 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
intensity. Until their day, it had not been written on exclusively.
The lovers of Nature were not, till then, as they may perhaps since be
considered, a sect apart. Though perfectly sincere in all the adorations
they offered, they were less entirely, and certainly less diligently and
constantly, her adorers.

It is the great praise of Bernardin de St. Pierre, that coming
immediately after Rousseau and Buffon, and being one of the most
proficient writers of the same school, he was in no degree their
imitator, but perfectly original and new. He intuitively perceived the
immensity of the subject he intended to explore, and has told us that
no day of his life passed without his collecting some valuable materials
for his writings. In the divine works of Nature, he diligently sought
to discover her laws. It was his early intention not to begin to write
until he had ceased to observe; but he found observation endless, and
that he was "like a child who with a shell digs a hole in the sand to
receive the waters of the ocean." He elsewhere humbly says, that not
only the general history of Nature, but even that of the smallest plant,
was far beyond his ability. Before, however, speaking further of him as
an author, it will be necessary to recapitulate the chief events of his
life.

HENRI-JACQUES BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE, was born at Havre in 1737. He
always considered himself descended from that Eustache de St. Pierre,
who is said by Froissart, (and I believe by Froissart only), to have so
generously offered himself as a victim to appease the wrath of Edward
the Third against Calais. He,