280 THE IMPORTANCE OP CONSULTING THE BIAS OP YOUTH 



time spent in the acquirement of the dead languages need not be 

 considered as entirely thrown away. 



But it is time to conclude, lest my readers exclaim, as our favour- 

 ite poet to Damasippus ;— 



"O major, tandem parcas, insane, minori !" 



Cheltenham, May, 1837. 



[We consider the utility or otherwise of classical pursuits to be placed on 

 its right footing in Dr. Caldwell's Thoughts on the Study of the Greek and 

 Latin Languages, to which excellent treatise we refer our readers. — Eds.] 



THE IMPORTANCE OP CONSULTING THE BIAS OF 



YOUTH IN THE CHOICE OF A BUSINESS OR 



PROFESSION, 



EXEMPLIPIED IN THE CASE OP LINNEUS. 



[From a MS. Memoir]. 



After spending three years more under the private tuition of 

 Gabriel Hok, who ultimately married his eldest sister, Linneus was 

 advanced to a higher grade in the school, and was, in consequence, 

 privileged with more frequent opportunities than he had before en- 

 joyed of indulging and cherishing his attachment to Botany — oppor- 

 tunities which he eagerly embraced, almost, indeed, to the utter 

 neglect of the important branches of learning which he had been 

 placed there to acquire. His highest pleasure was to escape from 

 the thraldom of the school, in order to ramble, unfettered, in the 

 country ; not to avoid his task, or to indulge that listlessness of dis- 

 position which so generally influences truants in their stealthy ram- 

 bles, but to hold secret and delightful converse with the fairies of 

 the meadows. 



On his removal, at seventeen years of age, to the gymnasium, or 

 high school, he manifested, more decidedly than ever, his uncon- 

 querable aversion to the studies necessary to prepare him for the 

 proper discharge of the sacred office. Rhetoric, Metaphysics, Ethics, 



