20 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



rectory when Carl was a year old. The present rectory 

 house is not the home of Linnaeus's childhood that was 

 burnt down some forty years later and rebuilt. Here 

 was a much larger garden, and Carl was as a child in 

 the Garden of Paradise. ' From the very time that he 

 first left his cradle,' says the enthusiastic Turton, ' he 

 almost lived in his father's garden, which was planted with 

 the rarer shrubs and flowers ; and thus were kindled, 

 before he was well out of his mother's arms, those sparks 

 which shone so vividly all his lifetime, and latterly 

 burst into such a flame.' ' The same thing that is said 

 of a poet nasciiur, non fit may be said without im- 

 propriety of our botanist.' * Carl was nursed in beauty, 

 fragrance, and pure delights. His toys were flowers, 

 and Christina, his young mother, herself with only 

 eighteen years of youth, used to stop his cries by giving 

 him a flower to play with. 



The smallness of the rector's income obliged him to 

 make the best of husbandry. He was his own gardener. 

 His child was his constant companion, enjoying to the 



full 



Delight and liberty, the simple creed 

 Of childhood, whether busy or at rest. 2 



Here on the scene one seems to see the sunny-haired 

 child running about among these ferny foregrounds, 

 his baby feet sometimes bare like his young brethren 

 around, sometimes, as became the rector's son, with tiny 

 canvas shoes with a buckle-strap across the instep care- 

 1 Linnaeus's Diary. 2 Wordsworth. 



