PREFACE. Vll 



sured by the extent of his acquirement ; and as a his- 

 tory, a critique, and a catalogue, nothing more pre- 

 cious in letters than his 34th, 35th and 36th books, 

 has escaped the ruin in which the fall of the Roman 

 empire had nearly involved all of enlightenment that 

 had grown up and flourished with it. To his huma- 

 nity and scientific curiosity combined, he became one 

 of the most memorable martyrs that stand on record. 

 The events of the day that closed his mortal career, 

 in the 79th year of the Christian era, are minutely and 

 touchingly detailed to Tacitus the historian, in one of 

 the most elegant of the epistles penned by a nephew 

 who was the worthy inheritor of the wealth, the fame, 

 and the virtues of his uncle. The body was found 

 three days after its destruction by the eruptions of 

 Vesuvius, and interred at Misenum, in face of the fleet 

 which he had quitted for the prosecution of his phy- 

 sical investigations. For the emulation of those who 

 delight to 



" Look from nature up to nature's God," 



as the best eulogy that can be pronounced on Pliny 

 himself, and, at the same time, as a sentiment evincing 

 his nephew's exalted mind, the subjoined extract of 

 the memorable letter cannot be too often and too long 

 remembered : " Equidem beatos puto, quibus Deo- 

 rum datum est, aut facere scribenda, aut scribere 

 legenda ; beatissimos vero quibus utrumque." 



No impulse short of an intense love of nature 

 could have actuated a man so deeply engaged in the 

 high offices of the state to snatch at every fragment of 

 his time as his nephew, in a letter to a friend, de- 

 scribes him and appropriate it to forming a digest of 



