2 INFANCYOF 



the original and more Southern Empire of the Britons, and the most 

 penetrating of their philosophers. Sir Isaac Newton, — had as yet, 

 reared his head in the learned world, as a new legislator and universal 

 reformer of any one science. The discoveries and merits of a Tycho 

 Brake, whose country borders so nearly on that of Linn/Eus, will 

 not stand a comparison here. The age we live in, is the first that made 

 a new epoch in the course of national learning. Among the great ap- 

 paritions, which the literary heavens have exhibited and rendered eter- 

 nal, a star from the North has shone forth, the brightest and most illu- 

 mining. Without comparing here Leibnitz, who run the best part 

 of his immortal career in the last century, Switzerland found in Hal- 

 le r, the greatest and most solid uni versalist ; Holland, inBoERHAAVE, 

 the greatest physician; France, in Voltaire, the greatest wit and first 

 favourite of the literary graces ; but Sweden, the most 5);5/eOT(2//c^z/ genius 

 of the age, the most intimate and scrutinizing minion that ever graced 

 the bosom of Nature; who rendered her knowledge the most regular and 

 the most cultivated, and became her teacher in all parts of the world. 

 Never was the name of any Literatus of his nation, or of Northern 

 Europe at large spread so far, honoured so devoutly, and rendered so 

 immortal as his. However distinguiflied and uncommon his merits 

 were, as extraordinary and memorable became the vicissitudes of his 

 fate, and as rugged and thorny the paths on which he attained the 

 climax of his greatness. 



Charles Linn^us was born on the third of May, 1707, at Rashuli, 

 a village in the province Smaland. Nils, or Nicholas Linn^us, 

 his father, who took birth in the year 1674, held the sacred funftion of 

 pastor of the village, two years previous to that event. He was joined 



