a type of

Often will

Often will

inviting him to taste of his goodness-to drink deep of that rich and refreshing stream which wells forth so abundantly amid the arid wilderness of this world. The season of night will suggest to him the dark night of spiritual bondage; and the dawn of morning flushing the eastern skies, will appear to him that liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free. his verses breathe contrite accents of sorrow for sin. he cry to the Lord out of the deep waters of affliction. Often will he pour forth ardent aspirations after that glory which shall hereafter be revealed. In short, he will find it to be the highest and worthiest employment of his genius; and while chained down to this " weary working world," he will often find it a most refreshing thing to employ himself in penning the hymn of praise, and contemplating the joy and repose of his heavenly home.

A. R. B.

LINNEUS AND HIS LAPLAND TOUR.

IN 1732, the Royal Academy of Sciences at Upsal appointed Linnæus to undertake a journey into Lapland, for the purpose of investigating the three kingdoms of nature in that country. - Nothing could have been more congenial to the taste of that young naturalist; nor would it have been easy to select any individual better qualified for the task. He accordingly set out alone on this interesting expedition on the 12th May, (old style), being at that time twenty-five years of age, carrying with him an inkstand, pencase, microscope, spying-glass, his journal, a parcel of paper stitched together for drying plants, three works of his own writing illustrative of natural history, a hanger, fowling-piece, and graduated walking-stick. On the 10th of October following, he records his safe return to Upsal, concluding with this benediction -"To the Maker and Preserver of all things be praise, honour, and glory for ever!"

From the journal which has been translated and published, our young readers might gain a few hints to aid them in the art of distinguishing, or to allure them into those habits of observation and reasoning, out of which so much information and delight frequently arise; and we beg, therefore, that they will follow us in our review VOL. IX. 3rd SERIES.

R

of this curious manuscript. We have called it a curious manuscript, because the original is such a mixed composition of Swedish and Latin, with such frequent signs, ciphers, and abbreviations, as would have wearied the patience or baffled the ingenuity of any one, with less learning and enthusiasm than its illustrious translator the late Sir J. E. Smith, for many years president of the Linnæan Society. "It is, in short, such a journal as a man would write for his own use, without the slightest thought of its ever being seen by any other person;" and for this reason it is much more valuable, since it contains not so much a transcript of the author's own mind, as a record of his discoveries; an account rather of what he did not know, than of what he was thoroughly acquainted with. For this purpose, principally, we introduce it to our young friends, as none of them, we are sure, can be in a situation to preclude them from compiling just such another record of their own observations. When we were young, and our ignorance of many common-place truths was charged upon us, we were accustomed to excuse ourselves upon the plea that “we had never been told;" as if our eyes, ears, and reasoning faculties were to remain useless, as long as we had no one at hand to tell us how we should employ them! It was a foolish notion, and we have suffered so much by indulging it, that we are anxious to guard others against so dangerous a habit. To say that we are too ignorant to learn, implies something like a contradiction; and to be ashamed of trying, or dilatory in beginning, because we may not imagine ourselves likely to effect what we wish, is almost the same as putting success out of our reach. Besides, we are speaking only of the habit of privately recording what we hear, see, think, feel, or do; and this is, consequently, a question that can affect no one but ourselves, till we have so weighed, collated, scrutinized, and proved our remarks, that, when we make them public, we may be better judges of their value or correctness than those who for the first time peruse them. We are often surprised at the slovenly manner of speaking which characterizes many young persons; and have invariably found it to be connected with the same carelessness of thinking; and this again, with the partial and unsatisfactory manner in which they see and hear all that passes around them. To correct this injurious carelessness, and to give a definite character to those

processes of mind which God enables us to exercise, next to the habits of hearing, observation, attention, association, and comparison, that of recording our thoughts in writing claims a place. It is too common a practice with those who keep diaries, to study so much how they may well express themselves, that the substance of what they had to say is overlooked, forgotten, or lost amongst the elegancies or decorations of the narrative; and many who sit down to write without really having any thing to say, seem anxious only how they may fill their book. To guard against such a dilemma, nothing can serve them but the vigorous exercise of those mental habits to which we have been alluding; for the first thing either in speaking or in writing well, is to possess materials for such record, or conversation. These remarks will apply with still greater force when we suppose ourselves to be registering what is usually called our religious experience. From the careful wording, the well-turned periods, the general air of studied elegance pervading the composition," says a valued writer, in speaking of a record of this description, "I could not regard it as the secret groaning of an oppressed spirit. I have frequently wondered at the very self-complacent style in which these confessions are framed, contrasting them with the brief and pathetic complaints of David and others under the real pressure of detested sin. I cannot but fear that such things sometimes come quite as much from the head as from the heart; and that pride makes a rich banquet on the admiration excited by our eloquent displays of humility."

"Letter

To these sensible observations from a little work on writing" by Charlotte Elizabeth, we have only to add that in all such cases our great business should be to lay hold of the sense of the incident, or the feelings of the moment, without any anxiety as to the language, or even the mode in which we are to record them. The journal of Linnæus, in this respect, is a good model for young persons, though, as we have before said, it seems a strange medley of symbols, abbreviations, and pen and ink sketches: some of them, indeed, so clumsily executed, that we can scarcely wonder at their singular effect upon a stranger. "I one day," says he, "shewed a Laplander some of the drawings in my manuscript journal. He was alarmed at the sight; took off his cap, made a

bow, and remained with his head inclined, and his hand clapt to his breast, mumbling some words to himself, and trembling as if he were going to faint away." We confess, indeed, that when we first saw his sketch of the swift-footed boatman of Lycksele

Lapland, with his coracle turned over his head, we wondered where he had found a fungus so singular as to rival the far-famed Tartarian ram of our old naturalists. These drawings however, rude and uncouth as they are, are oftentimes of greater value than whole pages of description; though we ought not, perhaps, to say as much of the strange signs which he occasionally used, some of which seem to have baffled the scrutiny of his ingenious annotator, as that by which he distinguishes the egg of the eagle owl, "ovum

sum" in which the point within the square is supposed to be substituted for the Latin word macula, a spot, so that the whole should read ovum maculosum, a spotted egg. We think, however, as Linnæus says distinctly in another place, that this egg was white, and as the dot is enclosed, that his meaning was just the opposite, and that he meant to write ovum im-maculosum; the particle im being often used in Latin composition to express the sense of the English in.

By these sketches, however, our young traveller did not intend to spare himself the trouble of verbal descriptions, which are very frequently introduced throughout his narrative; and evince such accurate powers of observation and analysis as we should be most

happy to find in any of our little readers. We think the following example so complete a "lesson on objects," that we cannot deny

ourselves the pleasure of bringing it forward. "Nothing occurred," says he, under date of the 19th August, "particularly worth noticing by the way, except an Andromeda with quadrangular shoots and flowers from the bosom of the leaves. The STEM is woody, procumbent, naked, thread-shaped, variously divided. BRANCHES partly erect, entirely covered with LEAVES, which are oblong, obtuse, somewhat rounded, concave, keeled, sessile, disposed in an imbricated manner. FLOWER-STALKS solitary, from the bosoms of the leaves, erect, thread-shaped, whitish, each bearing a drooping FLOWER. Calyx five-cleft, purplish, with ovate straight segments. Petal one, half-ovate or bell-shaped, exactly resembling the lily of the valley, cut half way down into five erect acute segments. Stamens ten, very short, with horned anthers, scarcely longer than the calyx. Pistil simple, the length of the calyx, Pericarp roundish, with five obtuse angles, erect, of five cells, with several seeds."

We very rarely find so many points of description taken notice of in an object far more calculated to excite observation than such a simple flower as the Andromeda; and should much like to know how the majority of our readers would describe it, and how far they could, or could not have distinguished it from any other plant. It is not in Botany only that this accuracy of investigation is called for; for every object with which the senses can be brought into contact is capable of just as rigid an examination. We are not now speaking of the propriety or necessity of describing in so many words the vast variety of things around us, as of observing them with care, and discriminating minuteness; for until they can clearly be identified, we cannot know with certainty any thing relating to them. No one can be more opposed to the dry details of their qualities than ourselves, but until we know them thoroughly we shall be unable to derive from our subject those exquisite pleasures which arise from a knowledge of the properties, habits, localities, and associations connected with them. And this seems to have been the idea of Linnæus, who evidently turns away with delight from such uninteresting, but indispensable minutiae of description as we have just quoted, to expatiate on the more congenial