MEMOIR 



Plutarch, the most famous biographer of an- 

 cient times, is of opinion that the uses of telling the 

 history of the men of past ages are to teach wis- 

 dom, and to show us by their example how best to 

 spend life. His method is to relate the history of 

 a Greek statesman or soldier, then the history of 

 a Roman whose opportunities of fame resembled 

 those of the Greek, and finally to compare the two. 

 He points out how in the same straits the one 

 hero had shown wisdom, the other imprudence; 

 and that he who had on one occasion fallen short 

 of greatness had on another displayed the high- 

 est degree of manly virtue or of genius. If Plu- 

 tarch's method of teaching should ever be followed 

 by an English biographer, he will surely place 

 side by side and compare two English naturalists, 

 Gilbert White and Charles Waterton. White was 

 a clergyman of the Church of England, educated 

 at Oxford. Waterton was a Roman Catholic 

 country gentleman, who received his education in 

 a Jesuit college. White spent his life in the 

 south of England, and never travelled. Waterton 

 lived in the north of England, and spent more 

 than ten years in the forests of Guiana. With all 

 these points of difference, the two naturalists 

 were men of the same kind, and whose lives both 

 teach the same lesson. They are examples to 

 show that if a man will but look carefully round 

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