Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/104

 are largely inclusive of the melancholic element, much of this sombreness of feeling, and its tenderness, is no doubt attributable to a climate, an atmosphere, a sky, that are too little cheered by the sun: and the national poetic feeling, with its wistfulness, and its retrospective depths of feeling, is in accordance with this want of settled fervent effulgence. Among the deeper shadows, and richer colours, and the mysteriousness of the latest autumn, the Poetry of England takes its tone.

But the English traveller, with his recollections of a home landscape—its grey gentleness of tints, and its mysteries of shadow—should prepare himself for disappointment in making his way on such a route as that from Jaffa to Jerusalem: no shadowy illusions are there! It is naked reality that surrounds him far and near in this arid land. The feeling that is due on this surface must be challenged to come where we know it ought to come; and it is not what he sees, but what he thinks of, that gives excitement to his journey. Enchantment has been dispelled; let then the gravest thoughts take the place of agreeable illusions! If English landscape be a painting in oils, the Syrian landscape is a painting in fresco: each line of hills cuts its hard outline—one range in front of another—and the most remote come upon the sky with a too rigid distinctness. At an early hour the sun drinks up all moisture from the earth's surface; and thenceforward all things are seen through a medium