HIS WORK FOR POSTERITY 219 



of his wisdom. The garden at Upsala was the rallying- 

 point of all ; and it now ranked equal, if not superior, 

 to similar establishments in Europe. Upsala became 

 of European celebrity we only know Lund and Abo 

 dimly by name. 



'The older botanists, emerging, as it were, from a 

 thick cloud of ignorance and book-learning, to a view 

 of nature in broad daylight, did not at once acquire 

 the faculty of seeing ; still longer were they learning 

 to describe what they saw.' Linnasus opened to them 

 the book of Nature, and taught them to spell therein. 

 They were first dazzled, then charmed. The glories of 

 Nature were not yet fully unfolded, but, like new-born 

 butterflies, they seemed all moist and dewy, as the rising 

 mist left them exposed before a careless world, until the 

 brilliant Linnaeus, sun of the bright dawn of science, 

 revealed them in all their beauty of colour, form, and 

 texture. Now it is the blazing noontide, when nothing 

 is left a mystery, when all is unveiled. All space is 

 full of beams so full that we are anxious to get out of 

 the blinding glare. By-and-by, as in all things else, 

 some new light will blaze out (more on a level with our 

 eyes), displaying to us the intense perfection of scientific 

 beauty. That hour will be the sunset ; next day comes 

 on the turn of something else. Each art or science is 

 brought to perfection, blooms, fades, and is forgotten. 1 

 The interest is over. The curtain falls upon that act of 



1 Pianoforte-playing, to wit, and the Italian opera, seem on 

 the wane. 



