LIFE AT STOCKHOLM 65 



former equality than to look up to him on the height he 

 had attained. 



Next to settling at Upsala Linnaeus would have pre- 

 ferred remaining at Falun, having always the tendency, 

 natural to a character at once practical and speculative, 

 to take up the duty that lay nearest, so making himself 

 the centre of an ever-widening circle ; feeling that a 

 ruling Providence had placed him in the spot he was to 

 make the best of, less for his own worldly advantage 

 than for the good of the place to be benefited. Life at 

 Stockholm would still be a floating existence, for a 

 professorship at Upsala was ever the goal of his am- 

 bition. In science he was famed for the f felicity of his 

 conjectures,' opening out light to new paths. But 

 felicitous conjectures, philosophic flowers, would never 

 enable him to marry : he must have fruit, and for this 

 he must fix himself firmly to some ground by roots, 

 and at Falun every spot of ground was preoccupied. 

 Moraeus and his friends never dreamed of the possibility 

 of Linnaeus enlarging the area. 



There seemed no room for him on the miniature stage 

 of Falun. His enviers for he had some enviers even at 

 friendly Falun implied that a peacock must have room 

 to swing his tail round. Perhaps he gave himself airs. 

 Their village vanity was fretted ; they were under an 

 eclipse so long as the brilliant young discoverer, spark- 

 ling with the new knowledge reaped in foreign lands, 

 was present. They were kindly, perhaps hypocritically, 

 apprehensive that he would not be able to exist in a 



VOL. II. F 



