perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams.... Mirtilla
stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly on the
old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the
glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy
bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the
landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven
through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these
towering clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny
landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how
excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture!
From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild
influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me
when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread
landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and
examine the various flowers and herbs and their little
inhabitants; when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry
heavens!... Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the
approach of morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams
of moonlight; and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us
breathe out in broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah!
what inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the
transports of the tenderest love.

Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally
feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards
Nature.

The æsthetic writer Sulzer (1750) wrote _On the Beauty of Nature_.
Crugot's widely-read work of edification, _Christ in Solitude_