were found in abundance near Jericho. This apple is the fruit of the solanum melongena of Linnæus, and is sometimes actually filled with dust or ashes. But this happens when the fruit has been attacked by the tenthredo insect, which, absorbing all the moisture of the pulp, converts the harder particles into dust, while the skin retains its form and colours.

Having returned with the pilgrims to Jerusalem, he proceeded to visit the other sacred places celebrated in the New Testament,-Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount Tabor; on which last spot, he observes, he drank some excellent goat's milk. From thence he proceeded to the Lake of Tiberias, where to his great surprise he found many of the fishes of the Nile. At Japhia, or Jaffa, a village near Nazareth, he found great quantities of the plant which he supposed to be the mandrake, or dudaim of the Scriptures. This plant was not then in flower, nor could he procure an entire root for want of a mattock. It grows in great plenty throughout Galilee, but is not found in Judea. The Arabs denominate it "devil's meat."

From thence he descended to the seacoast, visited the ruins of Tyre, and proceeded by night to Sidon. Here he found various objects highly interesting to a naturalist in the immense gardens of this city, from whence prodigious quantities of fruit are annually exported. The mulberry-tree is found in great abundance in this part of the country, which has led the inhabitants to pay great attention to the rearing of silkworms, which here, as at Nice, are hatched in little bags which the women wear in their bosoms by day, and at night place under their pillows. In botanizing among the neighbouring hills he was invited by a shepherd to share his dinner. It consisted of half-ripe ears of wheat roasted over the fire, a sort of food mentioned in the Scriptures, and warm milk. The practice of eating unripe corn in this manner likewise prevails in Egypt, where Turkey

wheat and millet are substituted for the proper wheat.

On the 23d of May, 1751, he sailed from Sidon in a small French ship bound for Cyprus, and on the 28th cast anchor in the harbour of Larnaco. Though he visited this island with no intention of travelling in it, being once there he could not forbear making a few excursions into the interior, of which the first was to the mountain of Santa Croce, the loftiest in the country. In the rusty-coloured limestone rock which forms the basis of this mountain are mines of lead, copper, and rock-crystal; which last, of which some fine specimens are found near the ancient Paphos, was at first mistaken for a diamondmine by the Turks. A few days after his return from Santa Croce he visited Famagosta, once, when in possession of the Venetians, a splendid city; but now a heap of miserable ruins.

From Cyprus he sailed to Rhodes and Scio, and thence to Smyrna, carrying along with him an incredible quantity of curiosities in the three kingdoms of nature, which he had collected in Egypt and the Levant. His sole desire now was to return by the first occasion which should present itself to Sweden; but his strength had been so much impaired by the fatigue of travelling and the heats of Palestine, that he was constrained to defer his departure from Smyrna. His disorder, however, which was a confirmed consumption, proceeded rapidly; and although, as is usual with persons labouring under that disease, he continued to preserve hope to the last, his struggles were soon over. His death happened on the 9th of February, 1752, in a small country-house in the neighbourhood of Smyrna.

His friends in Sweden, by whom he was much beloved, were greatly afflicted at the news of his death; and to add to their sorrow, they learned at the same time, that having during his residence in the East contracted a debt of one hundred and fifty pounds,

his collections and papers had been seized by his creditors, who refused to give them up until the debt should be paid; and that thus his name and reputatation seemed likely to perish with his body. Neither Linnæus nor any other of Hasselquist's friends in Sweden were able to raise this small sum; when the queen, being informed of the circumstance, generously advanced the money from her own private purse; and therefore it is to the munificence of this lady that we owe one of the most curious books of travels of its kind that have ever appeared. In about a year after this the collections and papers arrived at the palace of Drottningholm; and Linnæus, who was no novice in these matters, declares that he was exceedingly surprised at the number and variety of the curiosities, among which were the rarer plants of Anatolia, Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus; stones and earths from the most remarkable places in Egypt and Palestine; the rarer fishes of the Nile; the serpents of Egypt, together with its more curious insects, drugs, mummies, Arabic manuscripts, &c.

The editing of Hasselquist's manuscripts was confided to Linnæus himself, and unquestionably it could not have been intrusted to better hands. The work, in fact, remains, and will remain, a lasting monument of the superior talents of the traveller, and of the taste, munificence, and affection of his friends.

LADY WORTLEY MONTAGUE.

Born 1690.-Died 1762.

THIS lady, whose claims to be ranked among distinguished travellers none, I think, will be disposed to contest, was born in 1690 at Thoresby, in Nottinghamshire. Her maiden-name was Mary Pierre

pont, and she was the eldest daughter of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, and Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of William Earl of Denbigh. Having had the misfortune to lose her mother while yet only four years old, she was thrown at once among the other sex, and thus acquired from her earliest years those masculine tastes and habits which distinguished her during life, and infused into her writings that coarse, unfeminine energy, that cynical contempt of decorum, and bearded license, if I may so express myself, which constitute her literary characteristics, and render her compositions different from those of every other woman. It was not the mere study of Latin, which the virtuous and judicious Fenelon considered highly beneficial to women, and which at all events may be regarded as a circumstance perfectly indifferent, that produced this undesirable effect; but an improper or careless choice of authors, operating upon a temperament peculiarly inflammable and inclining to voluptuousness. She acquired, we are told, the elements of the Greek, Latin, and French languages under the same preceptors as Viscount Newark, her brother; but preceptors who might, perhaps, be safely intrusted with the direction of a boy's mind are not always adequate to the task of guiding that of a young woman through the perilous mazes of ancient literature. In fact, among her favourite classical authors Ovid seems to have been the chief at a very early period of her life; for among her poems there is one written in imitation of this author at twelve years of age, containing passages which it has not been thought decent to publish. At a later period her studies were directed by Bishop Burnet, who would seem to have recommended to her the Manual of the ungracious and austere Epictetus, a work which, although she laboured through a translation of it, now included among her works, could have possessed but few charms for her ardent, erratic fancy.

VOL. II.-G

During this early part of her career she lived wholly in retirement at Thoresby or at Acton, near London, where she acquired what by a license of speech may be termed the friendship of Mrs. Anne Wortley, the mother of her future husband. With this lady she maintained an epistolary correspondence, from the published portions of which we discover that both the young lady and the matron were exceedingly addicted to flattery, and that at nineteen the former had already begun to entertain those unfavourable notions of her own sex which in a woman are so justly regarded as ominous of evil. "I have never," says she, "had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them."

Her friendship with Mrs. Wortley paved the way to an acquaintance with that lady's son, which, after much negotiation and many quarrels, the causes of which are rather alluded to than explained in the published correspondence, ended in a private marriage, which took place August 12, 1712. Lady Mary now resided chiefly at Wharncliffe Lodge, near Sheffield, where her son Edward was born, while her husband was detained by his parliamentary duties and political connexions in London. It would appear from various circumstances that Mr. Wortley Montague was a quiet, unambitious man, endowed with very moderate abilities; but his philosophic indifference or timid mode of wooing honours by no means answered the views of his wife, who was haunted in an incredible manner by the desire of celebrity, and who, possessing a caustic wit, a vivacious style, and splendid personal attractions, was conscious, that if once fairly launched upon the tide of the great world she could not fail of effecting her purpose. In the letters which emanated from her solitude we discover, amid a world of affected indifference, her extreme passion for exciting admiration.