407 



much advantage to their objects and such high 

 credit to himself, be soon or easily supplied. 



"I cannot but fear the effect which this shock 

 may produce upon the health, already too much 

 shaken, of another valuable friend, — I mean Mr. 

 Roscoe, who, I believe, is at this moment at Holk- 

 ham. It will indeed be singular if the lives of both 

 these men, amiable and worthy, as well as able 

 supporters of the great principle of religious free- 

 dom, should be fated to close just at the moment 

 when that great point, as far as regarded at least 

 all Protestant dissent, appears to be achieving its 

 last final victory." 



This misfortune did not follow immediately, — 

 Mr. Roscoe survived his friend more than three 

 years. He survived to add another testimony to 

 those already adduced of the value he attached to 

 the scientific attainments of his friend. In the 

 preface to his splendid work upon the Monandrian 

 plants, while speaking of the recent loss, Mr. Roscoe 

 adds the consolatory reflection, " that it did not 

 happen till Sir James had been enabled to terminate 

 his great work, the English Flora^ a work which 

 perfected the system of English botany as far as 

 present discoveries admit ; and has, together with 

 his other learned writings, conferred upon its author 

 a name and station which will remain pre-eminent 

 as long as the science itself exists." 



" If," as we are told by the Rev. E. B. Ramsay, 

 " much of the secret of human happiness consists, 

 as Paley observes, in the formation of habits of 

 observation, a knowledge of botany largely contri- 



