IN THE CHOICE OP A BUSINESS OB PROFESSION. 283 



was not slow to avail himself, to the utmost, of the high advantages 

 it afforded. He passed his examination in Physic in a manner 

 highly satisfactory to his tutor and creditable to himself ; and in 

 Botany, which he had before studied without reference to system, 

 he laboured so incessantly that he was soon enabled to assign every 

 plant he gathered its proper place in the classification of the great 

 Tournefort — a classification which, though highly ingenious, Lin- 

 neus quickly discovered to be defective. 



It is probable that, notwithstanding the bright and flattering an- 

 ticipations of Rothman, and the pleasing change which the young 

 naturalist, in consequence of his liberality, enjoyed, his parents did 

 not view the hopeless overthrow of their favourite scheme with 

 any high degree of complacency and satisfaction. In the church, 

 comfort, respectability, and a competency, were morally certain; 

 while in the unbeaten path which he seemed perversely determined 

 to pursue, honour and emolument appeared to them as empty 

 sounds, or as phantoms of the imagination that would inevitably 

 allure him to poverty and ruin. So little, even yet, were they ac- 

 quainted with the rich intellectual endowments of their son, and so 

 little able to enter into the lofty projects and to conceive the buoy- 

 ancy of hope of a great and aspiring mind, which often, indeed, 

 makes its way to riches and to fame where dull and easy mediocrity 

 would starve in penury and neglect. 



L. L. 



[Of course, every one professing himself a naturalist is familiar with the 

 history of the " immortal Swede ;" but as it may prove interesting and in- 

 structive to others, especially as treated by our intelligent correspondent, 

 we have much pleasure in publishing it in the form above presented. — Eds.] 



