34 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



arrives." It is no less characteristic of Bartram to advise caution 

 in the use of the " delicious fruits " of the South and abstemi- 

 ousness " in the use of spiritous liquor and strong and heating 

 wines." The letter ends with a postscript: "My Dear James 

 fear and adore God." ^°^ 



Ernest Hartley Coleridge has stated, perhaps with a touch of 

 exaggeration, that William Bartram " took up his work as a 

 botanist, to put his humanitarian precepts into practice and to 

 bear witness to the passionate but undogmatic faith which he 

 had learned from his father's lips." "" These humanitarian pre- 

 cepts and his passionate faith color all his views, whether con- 

 cerning man's relations to Nature and to his fellowmen or 

 whether merely topics of the day. We have noted the part 

 Quakerism played in influencing his views. There remains but 

 to emphasize Bartram' s kinship to the dominant views of the 

 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Reason and temper- 

 ance are two of his most important principles in the guidance 

 of life. It is easy to see that he stressed them both in his letter 

 to his nephew. Reason is the " Divine Monitor, . . . — supposed 

 by the Antient Philosophers an emanation from the Divine 

 Intelligence," which "points out to us . . . what is right and 

 true virtue" and " decides on every operation or motion of the 

 sensations ..." If we err, in spite of Reason, it is because 

 "The Mind is often seduced by the interposition of our pas- 

 sions and affections, by which means we can't sufficiently attend 

 to and obey the dictates of Reason." ^^'^ He shared the distrust 

 of the sensations typical of religion and of eighteenth century 

 thought generally. 



In spite of his geniality and love of human society, he was at 

 times quite bitter in his contemplations of the moral imperfec- 

 tions of mankind. Alone in the woods, he could compare his 

 " present situation . . . to Nebuchadnezzar's, when expelled from 



^'" In connection with this letter, it is of interest to note the following item 

 appearing in William Bartram's diary: " April 18, 1818. Died this morning 

 Dr. James Bartram of Kingsess grandson of the celebrated John Bartram the 

 Botanist & naturalist." (Manuscript Diary of William Bartram, 1802-1822. 

 In the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.) 



"" Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 2d series, XXVII, 69-92. 



^^^ Bartram Papers, I. 



