I led the poor old man to a seat, and tried as soon as possible to change the conversation, and lead his mind to the topics on which I had before heard him dwell with pleasure. A question about his friend and comrade, the famous Philip Nolan, effected my object. His dim eye for a moment flashed up like the last flickering of an expiring lamp, and he became eloquent in praise of the companion of his youth, his fellow in arms, and partner in innumerable dangers. The excitement soon died away, but it subsided into calmness and self-possession. He rose, and took his leave with recovered dignity of manner. He tottered to the door, and to his horse, a half-broken colt, which he mounted with difficulty. As he touched the saddle, he became a new creature. His infirmities had disappeared, and he was now a part of the vigorous and fiery animal he bestrode. There he sat, swaying with every motion of the prancing horse, restraining his impatience with a skill and grace too habitual to forsake him, and with an air which betokened a momentary flush of pride. He was like Conrad restored to the deck of his own ship. I could not see his face, but I had pleasure in thinking that the excitation of the moment might operate as a cordial to his drooping spirit. I looked after him as he passed up the street in a curvetting gallop, with his head-gear streaming on the wind, and bethought me that I might never see him again.
I was not mistaken. The blow that brought him to his knees before any but his God, or "the king his master," had crushed his heart. He never held up his head again, and was soon at rest. The prevalence of the Catholic religion among the French has preserved one spot sacred to the men and customs of other days, and there he lies.
LINNÆUS AND WILSON.
Fisher Ames has remarked, that it is as difficult to compare great men, as great rivers. He might have found a happier illustration; but the meaning is obvious, that whilst distinguished men bear to each other some points of resemblance, they are remarkable for points of discrepancy. Johnson traced lines of analogy and contrast between Dryden and Pope, whilst Playfair did the same between Newton and Leibnitz. Plutarch led the way in this kind of writing, but his parallels were occasionally more fanciful than true.
In many things antiquity has excelled; but in natural science and in works of fiction, the palm is due to modern times. Cuvier and Pliny, could not be impartially measured, without giving to the former a decided advantage. The light which fell on the latter was dim, in comparison with that by which the philosopher of France was guided in his researches. Persian monarchs might formerly have been amused by the tales which adulation told in their presence; but Sir Walter Scott has redeemed fiction from many of the purposes to which it has been applied.
Among the scores of men who have devoted their talents to natural science, Linnæus and Wilson are not the least conspicuous, and they bore a likeness to each other in the obscurity of their origin. The first was the son of a Pastor, who lived in a village of Sweden, and partly sustained his family by cultivating a few beds of earth. The manse (to use a word familiar in Scotland,) has more than once been the birth place of genius, as Thomson, Armstrong, and the translator of the Lusiad could have testified. The latter was descended of a line of peasantry—but they both evinced that science has palms to bestow, on all by whom they shall be nobly attempted and fairly won, whilst she leaves it to kings to adorn the undeserving with hereditary titles.
They both appear to have lived for a time out of their element, for the one had well nigh been sent to the awl, whilst the other was a weaver in Paisley. But the taste of Linnæus was early formed, whilst that of the ornithologist was not developed, until comparatively late in life. The biography of the Swede is full of incidents to show that his passion for plants took its rise in infancy, and grew with his years. The circumstances of his father being unexpectedly improved, the new residence of the Pastor was embellished by a garden, and though gardening had been his business, it now became an amusement. When the parent was employed among his plants, the son was seen by his side, drawing from paternal instruction, the elements of that science in which he was destined to excel. But the Ornithologist betrayed no early predilection for the branch of knowledge to which he subsequently became devoted. It was not until he had expatriated himself, and killed for his own sustenance, one of our forest birds—that the high resolve was formed of consecrating himself to the investigation of the feathered tribes. There is something striking in this event. An exile from Scotland, driven by poverty to seek an asylum on our shores, not knowing to what destiny his steps were tending, is reminded by an incident of the claims of science on his personal services. He had seen the birds of his own country, which Grahame had celebrated in one of his poems; but it is probable that the dishevelled plumage of the one alluded to deeply affected his mind. To an accident we owe a series of galvanic experiments, and the discovery of the law of gravitation; and if this be so, it is not to be wondered at, that to an event seemingly unimportant we should owe the enlargement of Ornithology.
Linnæus and Wilson made but small attainments in any other branch than the department in which each of them became eminent. The first was conspicuous in his medical profession, but this was the result of adventitious circumstances. He gained some acquaintance with Mineralogy, and even explored the province of Dalecarlia as a kind of Peripatetic Lecturer—but this branch belongs to Natural Science. He was sent in youth to an academy, with a view to prepare for the sacred office; but his habits, though marked by innocence, unfitted him for its duties. He appears to have been deficient in what Phrenologists call the organ of language, and especially in the acquisition of the modern tongues; but whilst others were becoming familiar with words, he was ruminating by Lake Helga, and stripping Lake Wetter of its plants, that the tribes of the North might learn to speak in flowers, and thereby resemble in traits of sentiment and imagination the caravans of the East. The attainments of the Ornithologist were from his circumstances necessarily limited. Confusion is generally consequent on education which has not discipline for its basis. Before Wilson left Scotland he attempted poetry, and some of his productions were attributed to Burns; but this kind of mistake is frequently made by the partiality of friends. The poetical productions of the Ornithologist are not entitled to much consideration; at least his temperament in this respect was more vividly displayed in action than in verbal expression. Both possessed remarkable powers of analysis, and in each the elements of taste were mingled in such a way as to turn the scale in favor of science rather than of imagination. The genius of both moved in a limited but perfect circle. That filled by the Botanist was stocked with herbs and the foliage of the Zones, surmounted by the golden flowers of the Line—and all held together by a diamond chain, whilst the choice assemblage was enlivened by the hum of the insect tribes. The other filled by the Ornithologist, was supplied from the air, and he crowded within its circumference birds of emerald and ruby grain, in the centre of which the Eagle was poised, whilst his ear was regaled by the song chanted at intervals from the curling vines of the Tropics, or the volume of melody from the woodlands of his adopted country. Each of them eventually insulated his mind to his vocation, and this is better than dispersing mental power over various pursuits. They thus reduced their genius to something of an integral kind, without the appendage of fractional parts.