What induces you, O man, to depart from your home in town, to leave parents and friends, and go to the countryside over mountains and valleys, if it is not the beauty of the world of nature which, if your consider well, you can only enjoy through the sense of sight? And since the poet claims to descriptions of such landscapes, would that not be more expedient and less fatiguing, since you could stay at home without exposing yourself to the excessive heat of the sun, stay in a cool place without moving about and exposing yourself to illness? But your soul could not enjoy the pleasures that come to it through the eyes, the windows of its habitation, it could not receive the reflections of bright places, it could not see the shady valleys watered by the play of meandering rivers, it could not see the many flowers which with their various colours compose harmonies for the eye, nor all the other things which may present themselves to the eye. But if a painter on a cold and severe winter's day shows you his paintings of these or other countryside where you once enjoyed yourself beside some fountain, and where you can see yourself again in flowery meadows as a lover by the side of your beloved under the cool, soft shadows of green trees, will it not give you much greater pleasure than listening to the poet's description of such a scene? (245 words)