14 Martins on the Life and Labours of DeCandolle, 



ture in every zone ; he recommends Swedish medicinal and escu- 

 lent plants instead of those which distant countries might offer. 

 His mind becomes a denizen of every corner of the earth, but he 

 belongs personally to Sweden alone. He allowed all political com- 

 motions to pass by him unheeded while absorbed in the contem- 

 plation of nature ; chained to his little inkstand, from which he 

 scattered through the world, with luminous, aphoristic geniality, 

 his thoughts, his anticipations of higher wisdom, — almost always 

 expressed in the language of Scripture, and with an emphatic 

 unction. 



How entirely different was DeCandolle ! He is the man of the 

 council, the man of the people. His power was felt as well in the 

 Genevan republic as in the republic of letters. No movement in 

 the political world is to him a matter of indifference. He notices 

 every change, and marks its relations to the progress of science. 

 If he open his lecture-room, it is not merely active young men 

 who sit attentive at his feet : the elite of the fashionable world 

 and of the higher walks are among his auditors ; men and women 

 of his own city, and numerous travellers from distant lands, who, 

 between Paris and Rome, crowd the highway of European travel, 

 passing through Geneva, all felicitate themselves upon having 

 listened to his eloquent discourses. Whilst the northern student 

 of nature meditates in solitude by the light of his study-lamp, the 

 pride of the learned world of Geneva, in his saloon, surrounded by 

 the comforts of a half-English, half-Erench establishment, re- 

 ceives the visits of rich or celebrated friends and of his fellow- 

 citizens, who talk of the movements of the political world, consult 

 with him on the interests of their country, or listen to the voice 

 of some enlightened citizen of the world, with lively interest in 

 his far-reaching plans. 



Thus are portrayed, in the persons of Linnaeus and of DeCan- 

 dolle, not merely the state of the natural sciences, but also the 

 more universal features of the spirit of their respective seras, as 

 exhibited in the school and in life. 



But in order to complete the portrait of our departed friend, I 

 must now give a more particular account of those literary works 

 which he commenced soon after his return to Geneva, when his 

 mind had attained its full maturity ; those works which especially 

 authorize us to term him the Linnaeus of our time ; I mean his 

 universal system of plants (an undertaking which was the result 

 of the observations of many years of repeated visits to the great 

 collections of plants in Paris and London*, and of a diligent cor- 

 respondence with all the considerable botanists of the world), which 

 he began to publish in the year 1818, and continued to labour 



♦ In 1816 M. DeCandolle visited Sir J. E. Smith at Norwich, where the 

 Linnsean Collection then was. — Ed. 



