204 HABITS AND MODE OF LIVING OF LINNAEUS. 
sanguine temper he became very susceptible to transitions from joy to 
sadness, and from these to anger. His heart was downright probity 
itself, and from his lips streamed candor, truth and virtue. Faithful 
and affe&ionate to his friends, he never even retaliated upon his ene- 
mies their malice and enmity ; he was not apt to forget an offence 
easily, and used to say : « I will not suffer myself to be deceived a 
« second time.” — All the concerns of house keeping and domestic 
ceconomy he entrusted to the care of his spouse, who ruled the family. 
He was a true and tender husband, and his fondness as a father was 
not less remarkable than his other good qualifications. 
•His mansion was neat and filled with handsome furnituie, he never 
disliked feasting his friends ; but the poverty which had once oppressed 
him in his youth, would not permit him to be lavish of expence. In 
all that related to his science, to natural curiosities, books, corre*- 
pondence ; or if he saw a person that really needed relief, for instance, 
a widowed mother with infant orphans, nothing could then restrain. his 
liberality and beneficence. The excellent colleftions of literary and 
natural treasures which he left behind him, prove what considerable ex- 
pence he was at, as a literatus and a friend of nature. We will illu- 
strate this assertion by the following comparatively speaking diminutive 
instance: In 1764 he wrote thus to the celebrated Austrian naturalist 
J. A. Scopoli, who was at that time a physician at Istria in Carinthia , 
and became afterwards professor of chemistry and botany at Pavia, 
where he terminated his meritorious life May 3, 1788 : « After many 
« vain endeavours, 1 have at last received your Description of the Carin- 
“ thian inserts from Holland. The postage alone stands me in about 
<* three ducats, but I do not grudge the expence. That work has af- 
o “ forded 
