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solitude is solitude no more, /But peopled with the Furies” (2.2.130-1). 416beginning of the drama, he says,Thus, at theMy mother Earth!And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.And thou, the bright eye of the universe,That openest over all, and unto allArt a delight – thou shin’st not on my heart. (1.2.7-12).This is, as Rutherford notes, a rejection of the nature-worship of Canto III of CHP:nature cannot help Manfred any more than religion or his own powers could. 417 Afterhis interview with Astarte, however, Manfred’s view of nature is changed, and, thus,he delivers an encomium upon the sun at what he expects to be his last sunset:Glorious Orb! the idolOf early nature,[…]Most glorious orb! that wert a worship, ereThe mystery of thy making was reveal’d!Thou earliest minister of the Almighty[…]Sire of the seasons! Monarch of the climesAnd those who dwell in them (3.2.3-4, 9-11, 20-1).The British Critic quite reasonably connects this speech with Adam and Eve’s praiseof the created world in Milton’s Paradise Lost: 418 “Thou sun, of this great world botheye and soul” (PL 5.171). The couple repeatedly refer to God as “Maker”, just as416 The task of the Ερινυες, the Furies, was to punish the perpetrators of great, and especially impious,crimes, including kinslaying, which makes them quite appropriate to Manfred’s situation if he is guiltyof Astarte’s death, as he believes.417 Rutherford, p.81.418 British Critic, 2nd Series, VIII (July 1817), 38-47, RR, I, 270-5: p.46 (275).266