338 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 



cultivators of science. It is from this circumstance that 

 not even an attempt has ever as yet been made to write 

 the history of Sir Joseph Banks. And yet, what so 

 worthy of contemplation as the history of one who loved 

 science for its own sake, who delighted in the survey of 

 important facts connected with the study of nature, or 

 tracing interesting truths belonging to the same branch 

 of knowledge; whose pursuit of knowledge was wholly 

 disinterested, not even stimulated by the hope of fame 

 as the reward of his labours'? And who better deserved 

 the name of a philosopher, than he whose life was 

 devoted to the love of wisdom, whose rich reward was the 

 delight of the study, whose more noble ambition left to 

 others the gratification of recording their progress in 

 books, and filling the mouths of men with their names ? 

 Much of what is explained, touching the real pleasures of 

 science, in the life of D'Alembert, is applicable to the 

 career of Sir Joseph Banks.* 



He was of an ancient and wealthy family, established 

 since the reign of Edward III., first in the West Riding 

 of Yorkshire, and afterwards in the county of Lincoln, 

 where they possessed ample estates from the end of the 

 seventeenth century ; and a considerable accession of 

 fortune came to them early in the eighteenth, by mar- 

 riage with an heiress in Derbyshire, named Hodgkin- 

 son, whose estates, by a shifting use in a settlement, were 

 severed from those in Lincolnshire till 1792, when the 

 whole fortune united in the person of Sir Joseph. 



He was born at Argyle Buildings, in London, on the 

 2d of February, 1743, 0. S., according to a note in his 

 own handwriting which lies before me, contrary to several 



* See Life of D'Alembert, and Appendix. 



