To the Italian mind, at all events, nature had by this time lost its
taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. Saint
Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for
creating the heavenly bodies and the four elements.
But the unmistakable proofs of a deepening effect of nature on the
human spirit begin with Dante. Not only does he awaken in us by a few
vigorous lines the sense of the morning air and the trembling light on
the distant ocean, or of the grandeur of the storm-beaten forest, but
he makes the ascent of lofty peaks, with the only possible object of
enjoying the view--the first man, perhaps, since the days of antiquity
who did so. In Boccaccio we can do little more than infer how country
scenery affected him; yet his pastoral romances show his imagination to
have been filled with it. But the significance of nature for a
receptive spirit is fully and clearly displayed by Petrarch--one of the
first truly modern men. That clear soul--who first collected from the
literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the
sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his 'Aspects of Nature,'
achieved the noblest masterpiece of description--Alexander von Humboldt
has not done full justice to Petrarch; and following in the steps of
the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears of interest and
value.
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