Volume 1

Harmonies of nature / by J.B.H. de Saint-Pierre; being a sequel to his Studies of nature ... With a portrait and a prefatory account of the author and the work, by Louis Aimé-Martin. Translated by W. Meeston.

  • Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 1737-1814.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Harmonies of nature / by J.B.H. de Saint-Pierre; being a sequel to his Studies of nature ... With a portrait and a prefatory account of the author and the work, by Louis Aimé-Martin. Translated by W. Meeston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    him as approaching.the reward of his well-spent days. Never was this expression more strongly excited than when my eyes were first fixed on the venerable author of the following pages. I had been conducted to his quiet retirement on the banks of the Oise, and approached it. in a pleasant evening of autumn. All around me was calm, the moon shed her mild lustre through trees stripped by this time of their verdure, while a gentle murmur put the faded leaves in motion, and carried them to the adjacent meadow. I perceived on the slope of a hill the benevolent sage whom I bad come to seek in this sequestered spot. Grey locks fell down his shoulders, virtue was marked in his features, and his blue eyes sent forth a look full of mildness. He seemed like one of the happy shades whom Virgil introduces in the midst of darkness under the pale foliage of the Elysian fields. It is impossible, siad I within myself, that so much knowledge and so much virtue can be destined to perish on quitting this transitory scene of existence. It was in this retirement that the author of Paul and • Virginia employed himself in the composition of the following work. Pie called forth his powers to display the bounty of Providence, at the ill-fated era when un- principled demagogues were making an abuse of their official power by retrenching from the Latin poets the passages which recommended piety, that they might thus be rendered fit vehicles for an atheistical education. St. Pierre’s steady adherence to the dictates of re-