252 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



memories, as full of bloom as on May 13. 1 There was 

 great sweetness in thus reviving boyish memories with 

 his brother. How we miss those who are dead when 

 the lesser, the sweeter pleasures of life, its merry tales 

 and associations, crop up round our feet ! It is then we 

 long to walk with them again with them, our earliest 

 companions. 



He stayed two clear days with the Hoks, and 

 travelled on May 15 to Stenbrohult. The family had 

 not spoilt his birthday festival, but as he journeyed 

 homewards with his brother he learned the misfortune 

 that had befallen their childhood's home. It had been 

 burnt down, and the beautiful garden, i planted by his 

 father with the rarest herbs in Sweden,' 2 the loved 

 memory of his childhood, was wasted and destroyed. 

 Samuel's personal loss had been hidden in his wish to 

 spare his elder brother pain. ' It is a mighty, uncon- 

 scious stream, that brother's love, and sacrifices itself 

 often for a man with whom it seldom exchanges a 

 word.' 



It was just a year since the death of his father, 

 who was mercifully spared a sight so pitiful as this ; 

 but Carl Linnaeus lamented over the lost joys of his 

 childhood on seeing the ruins of that house where he was 

 inspired with an inclination for science so passionate. 



The memory of early days rushed over him as a 

 flood. The neighbours came round him ; he had known 

 them, the grey-haired white-bearded ones, when they 



1 This is early for this tree to be in flower. 2 Journal. 



