COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

420 COSMOS.
When classical literature acquired a more generally diffused
vigour by the intercourse suddenly opened with the politically
degenerated Greeks, we meet with the earliest evidence of this
better spirit in the works of Cardinal Bembo, the friend and
counsellor of Raphael, and the patron of art; for in the JEtna
Dialogus, written in the youth of the author, there is a charming
and vivid sketch of the geographical distribution of the
plants growing on the declivities of the mountain, from the
rich corn-fields of Sicily to the snow-covered margin of the
crater. The finished work of his maturer age, the Histories
Venctce, characterises still more picturesquely the climate and
vegetation
of the New Continent.
Everything concurred at this period to fill the imaginations
of men with grand images of the suddenly extended boundaries
of the known world, and of the enlargement of human
powers, which had been of simultaneous occurrence. As, in
antiquity, the Macedonian expeditions to Paropamisus, and the
wooded alluvial valleys of Western Asia awakened impressions
derived from the aspect of a richly adorned exotic
nature, whose images were vividly reflected in the works or
highly gifted writers, even for centuries afterwards ; so, in like
manner, did the discovery of America act in exercising a
second and stronger influence on the western nations than
that of the crusades. The tropical world, with all the luxu-
riance of its vegetation on the plains, with all the gradations
of its varied organisms on the declivities of the Cordilleras,
and with all the reminiscences of northern climates associated
with the inhabited plateaux of Mexico, New Granada, and
Quito, was now first revealed to the eyes of Europeans.
work can succeed in
Fancy, without whose aid no truly great
the hands of man, lent a peculiar charm to the delineations
of nature sketched by Columbus and Vespucci.
The first of
these discoverers is distinguished for his deep and earnest sentiment
of religion, as we find exemplified in his description of
the mild sky of Paria, and of the mass of water of the
Orinoco, which he believed to flow from the eastern paradise ;
while the second is remarkable for the intimate acquaintance
he evinces with the poets of ancient and modern times,
as shown in his description of the Brazilian coast. The religious
sentiment thus early evinced by Columbus became
converted, with increasing years, and under the influence of