Von Martius on the Life and Writings of Robert Brown. 327 



method), Robert Wight, Wallich, and others, have borne testi- 

 mony to the efforts of their friend and countryman. In North 

 America, the valuable writings of Asa Gray and Torrey were 

 heralds of his fame. 



It would be a grateful task to trace the coiu-se of all these 

 morphological, physiological, and systematic labours in their 

 details, to show where they took their rise, where they ended, and 

 how, in their passage into the common stock of knowledge, they 

 have rarely been combated by other men of science, but for the 

 most part adopted, continued, and expanded ; but this is not the 

 place for such a fragment of the practical history of Botany. 



The writings of Robert Bro^^al, as correctly remarked by an 

 English botanist following close in his footsteps, John J. Bennett, 

 are condones ad clerum ; they deal with the most profound and 

 important principles of the laws of form and development, — 

 problems which, in part proposed by himself, are brought out 

 into the fullest light, to undergo the scrutiny of every doubt and 

 every scientific objection. It is significant, that the most im- 

 ])ortant of them were satisfactorily solved in his epoch, dm-ing 

 his eighty-five years' life. 



Where he was not bound, as in descriptive works, to a rigid 

 systematic style, he ran into a discursive manner, which renders 

 his works difficult of study by the uninitiated, but exerts a pe- 

 culiar charm over the instructed mind. To his rich and mobile 

 genius every striking fact suggested a crowd of others, often 

 from the most remote fields — sometimes as contradictions and 

 objections, sometimes confirming, illustrating, or expanding it ; 

 so that he transports the initiated reader as it were into the 

 great garden of Nature, and leads him at once from flower to 

 llower and from truth to truth. Hence, in reading, as a classic, 

 to our advanced pupils many of his ti-eatises overflowing with 

 general ideas (for instance, on the Compositse, the plants of 

 tropical Africa, or on Kingia), explaining and illustrating them 

 by demonstrations, we have partaken of the fidl youthful trans- 

 port of intellectual voyages of discovery. 



But I must not prolong these reflections on the scientific 

 aspect of this extraordinary man, since the fairest and most 

 glorious aspect — his moral nature — remains to be sketched. 

 JRobert Brown united all the moral qualities ivhich belong to the 

 searcher of Nature, of so pure and strong a quality, that his 

 personal character renders him an exemplar beyond the mere 

 circle of' his contemporaries. He was more than a modern 

 naturalist. In the full harmony of his nature, he impressed us 

 with the image of an ancient philosopher and sage. Robert 

 Brown was a truly great and good man. Love of truth above 

 all things, calmness, sincerity, modesty, tender sensibility, and 



