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odoriferous shades of Zanthoxylon, his verdant couch guarded by the Deity; Liberty, and the Muses, inspiring him with wisdom and valour, whilst the balmy zephyrs fan him to sleep.
The apostrophes and redundant descriptions, which the rigorous German translator pruned away, did not prevent
Zimmermann from calling
Bartram's volume one of the most instructive works of the time.
The faults of an unpractised writer are relieved by a constant cheerfulness, candour, and animation; “cheerful,” “cheering,” and “social” are favourite epithets.
The words “animate,” “animating,” “vibration,” and the like, give a clue to his Neoplatonic and Hartleian philosophy, which subtly recommended him to contemporary
European poets:
If, then, the visible, the mechanical part of the animal creation, the mere material part, is so admirably beautiful, harmonious, and incomprehensible, what must be the intellectual system?
that inexpressibly more essential principle, which secretly operates within?
that which animates the inimitable machines, which gives them motion, impowers them to act, speak, and perform, this must be divine and immortal?
There is a motion and a spirit in the environment itself: “At the reanimating appearance of the rising sun, nature again revives” ; “the atmosphere was now animated with the efficient principle of vegetative life” ; “the balmy winds breathed the animating odours of the groves around me.”
“At the return of the morning, by the powerful influence of light, the pulse of nature becomes more active, and the universal vibration of life insensibly and irresistibly moves the wondrous machine.
How cheerful and gay all nature appears.”
In
Bartram the “feeling for nature” is quite as distinct as the idea of the “natural” man. The social philosophy of the time is more apparent in
Cravecoeur.
In a letter to
Richard Henderson on the subject of immigrants,
Washington writes (19 June, 1788):
The author of the queries may then be referred to the Information for those who would wish to remove to America, and [sic] published in Europe in the year 1784, by the great philosopher Dr. Franklin.
Short as it is, it contains almost everything that needs to be known on the subject of migrating to this country. ...
