LIFE AND CHARACTER 15 



echoes the philosophical temper of the century in which both 

 father and son lived. Furthermore, if John Bartram " seemed to 

 have been designed for the study and contemplation of Nature, 

 and the culture of philosophy," ^* his son, brought up in a home 

 where genuine wonder about nature, man, and God was very 

 keen, was designed for nothing else. John Bartram was " at 

 least twenty folio pages, large paper, well filled, on the subjects 

 of botany, fossils, husbandry, and the first creation; " ®^ so was 

 William Bartram, who ever acknowledged the benefits he had 

 derived from his father. In the very first paragraph of the 

 Introduction to his Travels he tells us that " From the advan- 

 tages the journalist enjoyed under his father John Bartram, 

 botanist to the king of Great-Britain, and fellow of the Royal 

 Society, it is hoped that his labors will present new as well as 

 useful information to the botanist and zoologist." He refers to 

 his journey of " some years ago with my father, John Bartram," 

 during the course of which he had observed " many subjects of 

 natural history . . . that were interesting, and not taken notice 

 of by any traveller." '''"' He sails by Mount Hope, which, he 

 informs us, was " so named by my father John Bartram." " He 

 recalls his youth when he attended his father " on a journey to 

 the Catskill Mountains, in the government of New York." ^^ 

 Towards the end of his book he prints a spontaneous tribute to 

 his father, " the American botanist and traveller, who contrib- 

 uted as much if not more than any other man towards enriching 

 the North American botanical nomenclature, as well as its 

 natural history." ^^ 



John Bartram must again be mentioned in connection with 

 his son's humanitarian views — those views that came to be of 

 such momentous importance in the latter years of the eighteenth 

 century. On the question of slavery both reflected actively the 

 Quaker creed. John Bartram had freed his slaves, made them 



°* " Some Account of the late Mr. John Bartram," by William Bartram. Phila. 

 Med. & Phys. Journal, I, 116. 



""* Benjamin Franklin to Jared Eliot, Sept. 1, 1775. Quoted by Duyckinck, op. 

 cit., I, 234. 



'"'Travels, 55. ^^bid., 270. 



^' Ibid., 98. " Ibid., Ali. 



