Art, Humanity And Nature:  The Transition of The Age of Enlightenment to Romanticism

"He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock."  Deuteronomy

""Why remain in England and suffer a whole Continent to lie waste without any improvement." - John Winthrop on deciding to colonize America. 1629.

Outside the settlements there was nothing but "A waste and howling wilderness, where none inhabited But hellish fiends, and brutish men That Devils worshipped." Michael Wigglesworth "God's Controversy with New England" 1662

"Thus we behold Kentucky, lately an howling wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a fruitful field; this region, so favourably distinguished by nature, now become the habitation of civilization, at a period unparalleled in history...."   —Daniel Boone from The Adventures of Daniel Boone, 1784