public undertakings, in which we find him engaged, was the institution of the Linnæan society, of which he was chosen the first president, an honourable appointment, which he held by successive annual re-elections until his death. Alluding, in his inaugural discourse, to the Linnæan collections, he says: "I consider myself as a trustee of the public, and hold these treasures only for the purpose of making them useful to the world and natural history in general, and particularly to this society, of which I glory in having contributed to lay the foundation, and to the service of which I shall joyfully consecrate my labours, so long as it continues to answer the purposes for which it was designed." From this period Sir James gave lectures on botany, first at his own house, and afterwards before various public institutions in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and other places, and with great and increasing success and reputation, "When his health was good, the occupation was one he enjoyed. He arranged previously the heads of his lecture; but for words he always trusted to the ideas which arose in his mind while he was delivering it, and in general he exceeded the allotted time, and had more to say than could be compressed into the space of an hour. A printed abstract of the subject he intended to discourse upon was not omitted, for the convenience of himself and his auditors; and of these sketches he composed a great variety, as the succession of his courses required. Of one of these Dr Goodenough, in the year 1795, tells him, I am quite charmed with your syllabus. I would advise you, while you are a lecturer-do not defer it till you have given it up, it will not be half so well done-to draw out all that matter at full length, and publish it as suits you; it would be another Philosophia Botanica in a fashionable dress.'

In 1796 he married the only daughter of Robert Reeve, Esq. of Lowestoft, in Suffolk; and in the following year he removed to Norwich, his native place, where he continued to reside, paying occasional visits to London, for the remainder of his life.

Of Sir James's numerous and valuable scientific publications, it does not belong to our present purpose to speak. All of them are remarkable, as it has been said, "for accuracy in observing, accuracy in recording, and unusual accuracy in printing." Yet his biographer informs us, that he seldom copied what he wrote, but sent the first draught to the printer, sometimes with scarcely an erasure of the pen, and perfect in the minutest particulars of orthography and punctuation; and that he often wrote the best when pressed for time, as was commonly the case with his dedications and prefaces. But what most distinguishes his scientific writings is the pure, unconstrained, and affecting moral and religious spirit which they breathe, of which it would be easy to multiply illustrations. One must suffice, the concluding paragraphs of the preface to his Introduction to Botany."

To those," he observes, "whose minds and understandings are already formed the study of nature may be recommended independently, of all other considerations, as a rich source of innocent pleasure. Some people are ever inquiring, what is the use of any particular plant; by which they mean, what food or physic, or what materials for the painter or dyer does it afford? They look on a beautiful flowery meadow with admiration, only in proportion as it affords nauseous drugs or salves. Others consider a botanist with respect only as he may be able

to teach them soine profitable improvement in tanning, or dyeing, by which they may quickly grow rich, and be then perhaps no longer of any use to mankind or to themselves. These views are not blameable, but they are not the sole end of human existence. Is it not desirable to call the soul from the feverish agitation of worldly pursuits, to the contemplation of Divine Wisdom in the beautiful economy of nature? Is it not a privilege to walk with God in the garden of creation, and hold converse with his providence? If such elevated feelings do not lead to the study of nature, it cannot be far pursued without rewarding the student by exciting them. Rousseau, a great judge of the human heart and observer of human manners, has remarked, that 'when science is transplanted from the mountains and woods into cities and worldly society, it loses its genuine charms, and becomes a source of envy, jealousy, and rivalship.' This is still more true, if it be cultivated as a mere source of emolument. But the man who loves botany for its own sake, knows no such feelings, nor is he dependent for happiness on situations or scenes that favour their growth. He would find himself neither solitary nor desolate, had he no other companion than a mountain daisy, that modest crimson-tipped flower,' so sweetly sung by one of nature's own poets. The humblest weeds or moss will ever afford him something to examine or to illustrate, and a great deal to admire. Introduce him to the magnificence of a tropical forest, the enamelled meadows of the Alps, or the wonders of New Holland, and his thoughts will not dwell much upon riches or literary honours; things that

'Play round the head, but come not near the heart.'

In botany all is elegance and delight. No painful, disgusting, unhealthy experiments or inquiries are to be made. Its pleasures spring up under our feet, and, as we pursue them, reward us with health and serene satisfaction. None but the most foolish or depraved could derive any thing from it but what is beautiful, or pollute its lovely scenery with unamiable or unhallowed images. Those who do so, either from corrupt taste or malicious design, can be compared only to the fiend entering into the garden of Eden."

In July, 1814, Sir James had the honour of being knighted by the late king, George IV. At the instance of Professor Martyn, and with the countenance and encouragement of many of the heads of the house, and of several of the first dignitaries of the church, he applied in 1818, for the botanical chair at Cambridge. But a cabal amongst the bigots and underlings repulsed the honour and advantage which such an appointment would have conferred on the university, on the ground that he was a dissenter and a Unitarian. Professor Schultz, an eminent Bavarian naturalist, in his narrative of a Botanical visit to England in 1824, exclaims: "Who would have believed that a university, within the walls of which the immortal Erasmus Roterodamus once taught, and which had produced such a man as Milton, should ever, and even in the twentieth year of the nineteenth century, sink to such a depth of barbarity! It could make over its Bible and Prayer book monopoly to Baskerville, a scoffing atheist; but the moment a dissenter and a Unitarian was understood to be approaching the consecrated precincts, though for purposes purely scientific, this pious and self-denying com. munity bristles with horror."

Sir James Smith's health, always delicate, and subject to frequent attacks of an inflammatory nature, was visibly declining for the last five or six years of his life. It was amidst interruptions from this cause, and with the anxious desire often expressed that he might live to finish it, that he wrote his last and best work, the English Flora.' On the very day when he entered his library for the last time, the packet, containing the fourth and last volume, reached him. It concludes thus: “If our bodily powers could keep pace with our mental acquirements, the student of half a century would not shrink from the delightful task of being still a teacher; nor does he resign the hope of affording some future assistance to his fellow-labourers; though for the present, change of study,' to use the expression of a great French writer, may be requisite, by way of relaxation and repose."

a

On Saturday, March 15th, 1828, he walked out as usual, and apparently without fatigue; but in the evening he was attacked by such an alarming fit of sickness, as almost immediately forbade the hope of his recovery. He continued sinking until six o'clock on the Monday morning following, when he quietly resigned his breath, and his spirit returned to God who gave it. His remains were interred in the vault belonging to Lady Smith's family at Lowestoft.

Thomas Bewick.

BORN A. D. 1753.-DIED A. D. 1828.

THIS ingenious artist was born at Cherryburn in Northumberland. At the age of fourteen he was bound apprentice to Mr Ralph Beilby of Newcastle, a respectable copper-plate engraver, who afterwards took him into partnership. Mr Bewick was first brought into public notice by his wood-cut of the Old Hound, which gained the premium offered for the best specimen of wood-engraving by the Society of Arts, in 1775. That circumstance was the foundation-stone of his fortune, and from this time his fame gradually increased. In 1790, conjointly with Mr Beilby, who was then his partner, he published his History of Quadrupeds.' In 1795, he, with his brother John, (who was also eminent as an engraver,) embellished an edition of Goldsmith's Traveller,' and Deserted Village,' and Parnell's Hermit;' it was a royal quarto volume, and attracted much attention from the beauty both of the typography and of the embellishments. In the following year he made some beautiful designs for Somerville's Chase.' In 1797, he published the first volume of British Birds;' in 1804, the second volume; and in 1818, appeared the last of his published works, The Fables.' He was engaged on a History of Fishes' when he died; and left in the hands of his relatives a MS. memoir of his family, which is said to be written with great naïveté, and full of anecdote.

"Mr Bewick's personal appearance was rustic; he was tall, and powerfully formed. His manners, too, were somewhat rustic; but he was shrewd, and never wished to ape the gentleman. His countenance

An impression of this cut is given in the Memoir prefixed to Select Fables, printed for Charnley, Newcastle: 1820.

was open and expressive, with a capacious forehead, strongly indicating intellect; his eyes beamed with the fire of genius. He was a man of strong passions, strong in his affections, and equally strong in his dislikes: the latter sometimes exposed him to the charge of illiberality; but the former and kinder feeling greatly predominated. True, he was (what most men are) jealous of his fame, and had not much affection for rival artists; but they seldom crossed his path, or caused him much uneasiness. His resentment, when once excited, was not easily allayed, and he seldom spared those who ill-treated him; but there was much warmth in his friendship. Strictly honourable in his dealings, to his friends there never was a more sincere or kinder-hearted man than Thomas Bewick."

There is an elegant critique on Bewick's works in Blackwood's Magazine' for 1825, from which we extract the following just and spirited remarks :-" Of Bewick's powers, the most extraordinary is the perfect accuracy with which he seizes and transfers to paper the natural objects which it is his delight to draw. His landscapes are absolute fac-similes; his animals are whole-length portraits. Other books on

natural history have fine engravings; but still, neither beast nor bird in them have any character; dogs and deer, lark and sparrow, have all airs and countenances marvellously insipid, and of a most flat similitude. You may buy dear books, but if you want to know what a bird or quadruped is, to Bewick you must go at last. It needs only to glance at the works of Bewick, to convince ourselves with what wonderful felicity the very countenance and air of his animals are marked and distinguished. There is the grave owl, the silly wavering lapwing, the pert jay, the impudent over-fed sparrow, the airy lark, the sleepyheaded gourmand duck, the restless titmouse, the insignificant wren, the clean harmless gull, the keen rapacious kite-every one has his character.

"His vignettes are just as remarkable. Take his British Birds, and in the tail-pieces to these volumes you shall find the most touching representations of nature in all her forms, animate and inanimate. There are the poachers tracking a hare in the snow; and the urchins who have accomplished the creation of a 'snow-man;' the disappointed beggar leaving the gate open for the pigs and poultry to march over the good dame's linen, which she is laying out to dry; the thief whe sees devils in every bush-a sketch that Hogarth himself might envy; the strayed infant standing at the horse's heels, and pulling his tail, while the mother is in an agony flying over the style; the sportsman who has slipped into the torrent; the blind man and boy, unconscious of Keep on this side;' and that best of burlesques on military pomp, the four urchins astride of gravestones for horses, the first blowing a glass trumpet, and the others bedizened in tatters, with rush-caps and wooden swords.

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Nor must we pass over his sea-side sketches, all inimitable. The cutter chasing the smuggler-is it not evident that they are going at the rate of at least ten knots an hour? The tired gulls sitting on the waves, every curled head of which seems big with mischief. What pruning of plumage, what stalkings, and flappings, and scratchings of

1 Morning Chronicle.

the sand, are depicted in that collection of sea-birds on the shore! What desolation is there in that sketch of coast after a storm, with the solitary rock, the ebb-tide, the crab just venturing out, and the mast of the sunken vessel standing up through the treacherous waters! What truth and minute nature is in that tide coming in, each wave rolling higher than its predecessor, like a line of conquerors, and pouring in amidst the rocks with increased aggression! And, last and best, there are his fishing scenes. What angler's heart but beats whenever the pool-fisher, deep in the water, his rod bending almost double with the rush of some tremendous trout or heavy salmon? Who does not recognise his boyish days in the fellow with the 'set rods,' sheltering himself from the soaking rain behind an old tree? What fisher has not seen yon 'old codger,' sitting by the river side, peering over his tackle, and putting on a brandling?

"Bewick's landscapes, too, are on the same principle with his animals: they are for the most part portraits, the result of the keenest and most accurate observation. You perceive every stone and bunch of grass has had actual existence: his moors are north-country moors, the progeny of Cheviot, Rimside, Simonside, or Carter. The tail-piece of the old man pointing out to his boy an ancient monumental stone, reminds one of the Millfield plain, or Flodden Field. Having only delineated that in which he himself has taken delight, we may deduce his character from his pictures: his heartfelt love of his native country, its scenery, its manners, its airs, its men and women; his propensity

by himself to wander

Adown some trotting burn's meander,
And no think lang:

his intense observation of nature and human life; his satirical and somewhat coarse humour; his fondness for maxims and old saws; his vein of worldly prudence now and then cropping out,' as the miners call it, into day-light; his passion for the sea-side, and his delight in 'the angler's solitary trade:' all this, and more, the admirer of Bewick may deduce from his sketches."

Dugald Stewart.

BORN A. D. 1753.-DIED A. D. 1828.

THIS very eminent man was the son of Dr Matthew Stewart, professor of mathematics in the university of Edinburgh. He was born on the 22d of November, 1753. After having passed through the classes of the high-school, and attended courses of lectures on intellectual and moral philosophy, by Dr Stevenson and Dr Adam Ferguson, in the university of his native city, he removed to the university of Glasgow, chiefly with the view of attending Dr Reid's lectures on mental science. In 1774 he was appointed assistant and successor to his father in the chair which he held in the university of Edinburgh; and in 1778, during Dr Adam Ferguson's absence in America, he supplied the chair of moral philosophy also. In both these chairs he acquitted himself with great ability and success.

In