Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/86

 trackless swamps, nor of irrigated rice-levels, nor of leagues on leagues of open corn-land, nor of Saharas. Poetry has not weathered the tempests, nor confronted the terrors of the Atlas ranges:—it has not sported on the flanks of Caucasus, or on the steeps of the Andes, or the Himalayas; nor has it breathed on the rugged vertebrae of the North American continent. In none of those regions has it appeared which oppress the spirit by a dreary sameness, or by shapeless magnitudes, or featureless sublimity. Poetry has had its birth, and it has sported its childhood, and it has attained its manhood, and has blended itself with the national life in countries such as Greece, with its rugged hills, and its myrtle groves, and its sparkling rills; but not in Egypt:—in Italy; but not on the dead levels of Northern Europe. Poetry was born and reared in Palestine—but not in Mesopotamia:—in Persia—but not in India. Pre-eminently has Poetry found its home among the rural graces of England, and amid the glens of Scotland; and there, rather than in those neighbouring countries which are not inferior to the British Islands in any other products of intellect or of taste.

Exceptions—apparent only, or of a very partial kind—might be adduced in contradiction of these general affirmations. Exceptions there will be to any generalization that touches human nature; for in a true sense the human mind is superior to all exterior conditions; and its individual forces are such as to