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public undertakings, in which we find him engaged, was the institution of the Linnæan society, of which he was chosen the first president, an honourable appointment, which he held by successive annual re-elections until his death. Alluding, in his inaugural discourse, to the Linnæan collections, he says: "I consider myself as a trustee of the public, and hold these treasures only for the purpose of making them useful to the world and natural history in general, and particularly to this society, of which I glory in having contributed to lay the foundation, and to the service of which I shall joyfully consecrate my labours, so long as it continues to answer the purposes for which it was designed." From this period Sir James gave lectures on botany, first at his own house, and afterwards before various public institutions in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and other places, and with great and increasing success and reputation, "When his health was good, the occupation was one he enjoyed. He arranged previously the heads of his lecture; but for words he always trusted to the ideas which arose in his mind while he was delivering it, and in general he exceeded the allotted time, and had more to say than could be compressed into the space of an hour. A printed abstract of the subject he intended to discourse upon was not omitted, for the convenience of himself and his auditors; and of these sketches he composed a great variety, as the succession of his courses required. Of one of these Dr Goodenough, in the year 1795, tells him, 'I am quite charmed with your syllabus. I would advise you, while you are a lecturer-do not defer it till you have given it up, it will not be half so well done-to draw out all that matter at full length, and publish it as suits you; it would be another Philosophia Botanica in a fashionable dress."

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In 1796 he married the only daughter of Robert Reeve, Esq. of Lowestoft, in Suffolk; and in the following year he removed to Norwich, his native place, where he continued to reside, paying occasional visits to London, for the remainder of his life.

Of Sir James's numerous and valuable scientific publications, it does not belong to our present purpose to speak. All of them are remarkable, as it has been said, "for accuracy in observing, accuracy in recording, and unusual accuracy in printing." Yet his biographer informs us, that he seldom copied what he wrote, but sent the first draught to the printer, sometimes with scarcely an erasure of the pen, and perfect in the minutest particulars of orthography and punctuation; and that he often wrote the best when pressed for time, as was commonly the case with his dedications and prefaces. But what most distinguishes his scientific writings is the pure, unconstrained, and affecting moral and religious spirit which they breathe, of which it would be easy to multiply illustrations. One must suffice, the concluding paragraphs of the preface to his Introduction to Botany."

"To those," he observes, "whose minds and understandings are already formed the study of nature may be recommended independently, of all other considerations, as a rich source of innocent pleasure. Some people are ever inquiring, what is the use of any particular plant; by which they mean, what food or physic, or what materials for the painter or dyer does it afford? They look on a beautiful flowery meadow with admiration, only in proportion as it affords nauseous drugs or salves. Others consider a botanist with respect only as he may be able

to teach them some profitable improvement in tanning, or dyeing, by which they may quickly grow rich, and be then perhaps no longer of any use to mankind or to themselves. These views are not blameable, but they are not the sole end of human existence. Is it not desirable to call the soul from the feverish agitation of worldly pursuits, to the contemplation of Divine Wisdom in the beautiful economy of nature? Is it not a privilege to walk with God in the garden of creation, and hold converse with his providence? If such elevated feelings do not lead to the study of nature, it cannot be far pursued without rewarding the student by exciting them. Rousseau, a great judge of the human heart and observer of human manners, has remarked, that 'when science is transplanted from the mountains and woods into cities and worldly society, it loses its genuine charms, and becomes a source of envy, jealousy, and rivalship.' This is still more true, if it be cultivated as a mere source of emolument. But the man who loves botany for its own sake, knows no such feelings, nor is he dependent for happiness on situations or scenes that favour their growth. He would find himself neither solitary nor desolate, had he no other companion than a mountain daisy, that modest crimson-tipped flower,' so sweetly sung by one of nature's own poets. The humblest weeds or moss will ever afford him something to examine or to illustrate, and a great deal to admire. Introduce him to the magnificence of a tropical forest, the enamelled meadows of the Alps, or the wonders of New Holland, and his thoughts will not dwell much upon riches or literary honours; things that

Play round the head, but come not near the heart.'

In botany all is elegance and delight. No painful, disgusting, unhealthy experiments or inquiries are to be made. Its pleasures spring up under our feet, and, as we pursue them, reward us with health and serene satisfaction. None but the most foolish or depraved could derive any thing from it but what is beautiful, or pollute its lovely scenery with unamiable or unhallowed images. Those who do so, either from corrupt taste or malicious design, can be compared only to the fiend entering into the garden of Eden."

In July, 1814, Sir James had the honour of being knighted by the late king, George IV. At the instance of Professor Martyn, and with the countenance and encouragement of many of the heads of the house, and of several of the first dignitaries of the church, he applied in 1818, for the botanical chair at Cambridge. But a cabal amongst the bigots and underlings repulsed the honour and advantage which such an appointment would have conferred on the university, on the ground that he was a dissenter and a Unitarian. Professor Schultz, an eminent Bavarian naturalist, in his narrative of a Botanical visit to England in 1824, exclaims: "Who would have believed that a university, within the walls of which the immortal Erasmus Roterodamus once taught, and which had produced such a man as Milton, should ever, and even in the twentieth year of the nineteenth century, sink to such a depth of barbarity! It could make over its Bible and Prayer book monopoly to Baskerville, a scoffing atheist; but the moment a dissenter and a Unitarian was understood to be approaching the consecrated precincts, though for purposes purely scientific, this pious and self-denying community bristles with horror."

look of pity and contempt, that I was too small, and sent me away sufficiently mortified. I expected to be very ill received by my god. father, but he said nothing. He did not, however, choose to take me back himself, but sent me in the passage boat to Totness, from whence I was to walk home. On the passage the boat was driven by a midnight storm on the rocks, and I escaped with life almost by miracle. My godfather had now humbler views for me, and I had little heart to resist any thing. He proposed to send me on board one of the Torbay fishing boats; I ventured, however, to remonstrate against this, and the matter was compromised by my consenting to go on board a coaster. A coaster was speedily found for me at Brixham, and thither I went, when little more than thirteen. My master, whose name was Full, though a gross and ignorant, was not an ill-natured man, at least not to me; and my mistress used me with unvarying kindness, moved, perhaps, by my weakness and tender years. In return I did what I could to requite her, and my good-will was not overlooked. Our vessel was not very large, nor our crew very numerous. On ordinary occasions, such as short trips to Dartmouth, Plymouth, &c. it consisted only of my master, an apprentice nearly out of his time, and myself: when we had to go farther, to Portsmouth for example, an additional hand was hired for the voyage. In this vessel (the Two Brothers) I continued nearly a twelvemonth; and here I got acquainted with nautical terms, and contracted a love for the sea, which a lapse of thirty years has but little diminished. It will be easily conceived that my life was a life of hardship. I was not only a ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,' but also in the cabin, where every menial office fell to my lot; yet, if I was restless and discontented, I can safely say, it was not so much on account of this, as of my being precluded from all possibility of reading; as my master did not possess, nor do I recollect seeing, during the whole time of my abode with him, a single book of any description, except the Coasting Pilot.' As my lot seemed to be cast, however, I was not negligent in seeking such information as promised to be useful; and I therefore frequented, at my leisure hours, such vessels as dropt into Torbay. On attempting to get on board one of these, which I did at midnight, I missed my footing and fell into the The floating away of the boat alarmed the man on deck, who came to the ship's side just in time to see me sink. He immediately threw out several ropes, one of which providentially (for I was unconscious of it) entangled itself about me, and I was drawn up the surface till a boat could be got round. The usual methods were taken to recover me, and I awoke in bed the next morning, remembering nothing but the horror I felt, when I first found myself unable to cry out for assistance."

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At the age of fourteen, his godfather bound him apprentice to a shoemaker. "The family," he says, "consisted of four journeymen, two sons about my own age, and an apprentice somewhat older. In these there was nothing remarkable; but my master himself was the strangest creature! He was a presbyterian, whose reading was entirely confined to the small tracts published on the Exeter controversy. As these (at least his portion of them) were all on one side, he entertained no doubt of their infallibility, and being noisy and disputatious, was sure to silence his opponents; and became, in consequence of it,

intolerably arrogant and conceited. He was not, however, indebted solely to his knowledge of the subject for his triumph: he was possessed of Fenning's Dictionary,' and he made a most singular use of it. His custom was to fix on any word in common use, and then to get by heart the synonym or periphrasis by which it was explained in the book; this he constantly substituted for the other, and as his opponents were commonly ignorant of his meaning, his victory was complete. With such a man I was not likely to add much to my stock of knowledge, small as it was; and, indeed, nothing could well be smaller. At this period I had read nothing but a black-letter romance, called 'Parismus and Parismenus,' and a few loose magazines which my mother had brought from South Molton. The Bible, indeed, I was well acquainted with; it was the favourite study of my grandmother, and reading it frequently with her had impressed it strongly on my mind; these then, with the 'Imitation' of Thomas à Kempis, which I used to read to my mother on her death-bed, constituted the whole of my literary acquisitions. As I hated my new profession with a perfect hatred, I made no progress in it; and was consequently little regarded in the family, of which I sunk by degrees into the common drudge. This did not much disquiet me, for my spirits were now humbled. I did not, however, quite resign the hope of one day succeeding to Mr Hugh Smerdon, (his schoolmaster,) and therefore secretly prosecuted my favourite study at every interval of leisure. These intervals were not very frequent, and when the use I made of them was found out, they were rendered still less so. I could not guess the motives for this at first; but at length I discovered that my master destined his youngest son for the situation to which I aspired. I possessed at this time but one book in the world: it was a Treatise on Algebra,' given to me by a young woman, who had found it in a lodging-house. I considered it as a treasure, but it was a treasure locked up; for it supposed the reader to be well acquainted with simple equation, and I knew nothing of the matter. My master's son had purchased Fenning's Introduction: this was precisely what I wanted, but he carefully concealed it from me, and I was indebted to chance alone for stumbling upon his hiding-place. I sat up for the greatest part of several nights successively, and before he suspected that his treatise was discovered, I had completely mastered it. I could now enter upon my own; and that carried me pretty far into the science. This was not done without difficulty; I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore,-in despite of the flippant remark of Lord Orford,-were, for the most part, as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource; but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest, my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent."

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Poor Gifford's literary tastes drew upon him first the contempt and afterwards the dislike of his harsh and selfish master, who treated him with great severity. He bore up, however, under all his misfortunes with a courageous heart, comforting himself with the reflection that his apprenticeship was drawing to a conclusion, when he determined to renounce the last for ever, and to open a private school. "In this

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