CHILDHOOD OF CHARLES LINNÆUS.

(Translated from the French of Louise Colet.)

If the winter in Paris seems to us gloomy when the great city is enveloped in mist; if London, with its mantle of heavy black fog, has, from October to April, a funeral aspect which freezes our very heart, what must be the long Scandinavian winter? There, for months, the ground is covered with ice and snow, the sky is like a dull, gray, boundless covering, except when the northern lights suddenly illuminate it with a passing glare. Sweden has one of those severe climates which give to minds, always obliged to turn inward upon themselves, studious tendencies and a calm melancholy. As for the bodies, they are generally robust in these latitudes, which offer many examples of longevity, but woe to the strangers who expose themselves imprudently to such a temper ature. It is said that Descartes took a cold while giving lessons in philosophy to Queen Christina, of Sweden, in Stockholm, and that he died from the effects of this cold.

Yet a queen's rooms should be warm! Nothing is more dismal than a poor Swedish village when November comes. As soon as day ends a thick smoke arises from the roof of each hut, and announces that the family is warming itself around the hearth.

One evening, in the winter of 1719, the chimney of the parsonage in the village of Roeshult, a poor dwelling scarcely distinguished from the surrounding huts, cast into the heavy, icy air a column of black smoke. Within burned a huge turf fire. The pastor and his family, which consisted of the pastor's wife, an excellent housekeeper, two little girls of seven and eight years, and

a

boy who might be about twelve, were seated around a table for the evening. On this table blazed a low, large iron lamp with three burners. At the foot of the lamp were heaped large balls of brown wool which the mother was knitting into stockings. The wooden knitting-needles clicked in her fingers; the two little girls strove eagerly to imitate their mother's task, and succeeded well. The pastor, with his elbows resting on the table, and his head bent over a large Bible, read from it now and then passages on which he commented.

The whole attention of the little boy, whose fair hair fell over his forehead and eyes, was absorbed by a copy-book of blank paper in which he was fastening plants and flowers. His little sisters sometimes looked at him by stealth, but without interrupting his work. As for the mother, she cast a fond glance upon him from time to time, accompanied by a smile, but with her eyes constantly glancing at her husband, the minister, who continued his learned and pious reading without raising his eyes toward his auditors. But suddenly he shook his 'great head with the obstinate face, and, after looking at his son, he cried, angrily:

"Still these copy-books and these good-for-nothing plants! I am determined to throw them all into the fire to make an end of your idleness and disobedience."

As he made a motion to execute his threat, the child pressed his book closely to his breast, and crossed his arms over it, while his mother checked her husband, and said:

Have patience, my good Nilo. He only wanted to arrange the plants he has gathered to-day, and now he is going to attend to his Latin tasks;" and she hastened to put away the

threatened copy-book, and to bring out instead the book of exercises and translations.

"Woman, in trying to excuse him you accuse yourself," cried the pastor, still angrily. "You speak of the plants he has gathered to-day. Yes, I know very well that instead of writing his exercises at home, or accompanying me to the beds of the sick and dying, he has been groping about under the snow, and running like a little vagabond among the mountain-passes to look for what?-I ask you that for nameless and useless plants!"

"Nameless they may be," replied his wife, who was as ignorant as himself of botany; "but there are some which are both useful and wholesome. The other day, for instance, when our little Christina cut her finger, a few leaves of one of these plants were enough to stop the bleeding. Then, again, when our old cousin Bertha burned herself so dreadfully some time ago, it was again the plants that Charley pointed out that cured her. The village doctor, whom she called, declared that this dressing of herbs was good; that it must be continued, and that whoever had prescribed it knew what he was doing."

"At all events," replied the father, "As I do not wish to make my son a doctor of medicine, but a doctor of theology, a minister of the Church like myself, he will, for that end, have to give up this ridiculous herbal and devote all his time henceforth to the study of the Holy Scriptures and Latin. Otherwise, I can assure him, that before another week, I shall send him to a Latin school in the village, where he will live under a harsh rule."

The mother was about to reply, but the pastor silenced her by his gravity, and, bending over his Bible,

he continued his reading in a low

voice.

Nothing was to be heard for a while in the smoky room, which served at once for kitchen, parlor and dining-room to the pastor's poor family, but the sound of the knittingneedles of the mother and the two little girls, and the fainter sound of the pen of the boy, who was writing his Latin translation.

He threw himself into his work with an absorption and a rapidity which was almost feverish. It was evident that he wished to do well and quickly an uncongenial task. When he had done he heaved a sigh of relief which interrupted the universal silence.

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"Well," said the pastor, raising his head, which had been weighed down by reading, meditation, or possibly by a half doze.

"There, father," said the child, placing beside the Bible the written pages.

The father ran his eye over them immediately, and when he had finished, he murmured:

"Good, very good! I know, Charley, that you can do whatever you choose. That is why I blame you the more when you are disobedient."

my

"I will obey you," said the child, looking at his father with an expression of tenderness and supplication; "but could you not let me divide time into two parts, one for the study of good books and of Latin, and the other for the study of plants and flowers, which to me are so many psalms and hymns singing the greatness of God?"

"You are crazy!" cried his father. "I have already told you that this childish study will come to nothing, and will interfere with your theological career. If you persist you know my resolution on the subject, and I will not depart from it."

With these words he arose and commenced the prayer which the family made together each evening. Then the children, having kissed their father and mother, went to bed. Charley slept in a dark closet, which had for its sole furniture a bed, a chair, and a set of deal shelves, on which were arranged a few books and the beloved herbal. Hardly was he in bed when he began to weep and to think over ways of following his vocation without disobeying his father. While he was still in tears his mother came secretly; she kissed and comforted him.

"My darling," said the good mother, holding Charles in her arms, "it grieved you very much, then, not to be able to go any more through the snow and among the rocks, looking after the hidden plants."

"O, mamma, if you knew how delightful it is when I find a new kind, to admire it and to count the roots, the stems, the leaves, the flowers, the petals, each feature, in short, of these treasures of the good God! It is in the spring above all that this keen delight is varied and multiplied. The newly-opened flowers are for me a complete world, such as the arch which incloses the whole animal creation would be for others. The plants speak to me and I understand them. I assure you, mamma, that they have instincts, habits, and differences in the same species, just as the faces of my sisters and myself are different in spite of our resemblance."

"You are dreaming, you are dreaming, my dear child," cried the mother, half laughing and half moved. "But in this terrible cold, and with the hardness of the earth, your pleasure must be greatly lessened. You take a great deal of trouble to secure a slight and sparse result."

"Oh, mamma! ask the hunter if he fears the snow that falls on his

shoulders. Ask the fisherman if the ice banks stop him. They only see the prey which they pursue, and which they bring home in the evening. And see," he continued, seizing one of the books of his herbal, "what would not one dare to possess one of these beautiful flowers which are here smiling at me and replying to my questions? Every day I discover some unknown species among the moss or the lichens; and my father wants me to give up these researches. He might as well have asked me not to live or eat any longer!" will eat;

"You will live and you only you will eat your breakfast an hour sooner than usual," replied his mother, gayly, "and every morning while your father is still sleeping you will go to your dear discoveries. But you must never stay beyond the allotted time, and at the appointed hour you must return at once to study your Latin."

"O, thank you, thank you!" cried the child, throwing himself upon bis mother's breast, who kissed him and left him saying, "Wait till to-mor row."

He was

For the first time in his life the child went to sleep radiant with joy, and had a beautiful dream. He thought he was suddenly transported into an immense valley surrounded with mountains which commenced in a gentle slope, and gradually rose till it reached the skies. seated beside a beautiful clear fountain which murmured among the plants and flowers of all sorts. It was summer, and the great white and gold clouds drifted through the intensely blue ether above his head. He had He had never seen such a sky in the poor Swedish village in which he was born, and which he had never quitted. His admiration was divided between the sky, where the sun shone in all his glory, and the smil

ing country covered with flowering shrubs and plants. He rose and began to walk, enchanted and alert, through the paths. He feared to touch a twig, a leaf, a petal, a stamen, and yet he wished to gather, one by one, each of these flowers in order to study them. At first he eagerly inhaled their perfumes, and enjoyed the sight of their beautiful forms and their exquisite tints. Then, seized with a sort of vertigo, he cried:

"Never, never can I fix in my memory this innumerable variety of species to classify and name them."

In his discouragement he stopped motionless, and praying inwardly: "My God! my God! he cried, "nature is too great for the weak sight of man, and if ever he attains to a knowledge of the outward, its depth and its details would escape him. Thou hast made, O my God, creation in thine own image, and we, poor, puny creatures, would measure its grandeur and describe its beauty -it is impossible! We know but fragments of thy work, the remainder escapes us. Forgive then, my audacity, O God, my father is right. ought to adore and serve thee as a humble minister, and not endeavor to know thee and explain thy works like a wise partaker of thy divine na

ture."

I

The poor child, crushed by the spendor of nature which surrounded him, fell on his knees praising God, and remained long in an ecstasy.

But voices which seemed the voice of God himself rose suddenly from the open calices of the flowers, and from the bosoms of the still unfolded buds. These voices cried to him:

"Come to us, we are thine. We love to have thee love us and seek us, to understand that we live and feel-we who have been for so long believed lifeless, inanimate and ca

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pable only of pleasing the eye. not fear to gather and destroy us, we shall be born again without pain. Each of our severed fibers will teach thee mysteries hardly suspected hitherto. Thou wilt find in the de. tails of our structure as many wonders as in that of the human body, for, on a different scale, we have, like mankind, an organization that suffers and rejoices. We have our habits, our manners, our imperious destinies fixed by unfailing laws. Look at and understand us, thou child who lovest us. Thou shalt know how we are born, how we develop, and how we attain to beauty or love."

It was not only the large and magnificent flowers of the tropics which spoke the cactus, the nenuphar, the magnolia. Neither was it alone the queen-flowers of the garden -- the rose, the tuberos, the lily, the carnation which spoke thus to the sleeping child. It was also all the little wild flowers, the daisy, the violet, the thyme, the buttercups, all the mosses and all the lichens growing on the rocks or beside the water. Each plant, each stem, each calix had, as it were, a distinct voice, and all these accents united formed a sweet and soothing harmony which plunged the little Charles into a delicious enchantment.

"Oh, yes," he cried, in answer to these mysterious words which he alone could hear, "I love you, I understand you, and I will reveal to the world the grace and the splendor of your secrets." He bent over the nearest flowers to gather them, but behold, a miracle suddenly took place around him! All the flowers seemed to move and to tear themselves from their roots. They came toward the child, made a fragrant inclosure around him, mounted to his heart and in his arms, then to his head, where they entwined them

selves into an immense crown. The face of the child shone transfigured beneath this emblem of a glorious feature. He grew rapidly beneath this coronation of his beloved flowers. Suddenly he felt a warm breath glide across his face. A kiss touched his face, and caused him an indescribable happiness. The sensation was SO vivid that he awoke. He saw his mother standing near him, half visible in the first ray of sunrise. The kiss came from his mother, his mother who understood his soul.

"It is time," she said to him. "Day is dawning. Dress yourself, pray to God, eat your breakfast, and hasten out before your father awakes. You will have an hour in which to look for your plants. Go, my child, since it is. your delight and your happiness."

The child thanked his mother, and while she helped him to dress he told her the wonderful dream which he bad just had.

Without understanding it, his mother saw in it a presage of happiness and of glory for her son, and determined to help him more and more in his vocation. As soon as he was dressed she gave him a wooden cup full of smoking porridge, which the child eat with avidity. Then she wrapped him in a little overcoat of coarse cloth, turning up the collar, which concealed the fresh face of the child as far as the ears. He set out joyfully, stick in hand. The good mother had abridged her sleep by at least two hours for the sake of her son and to gratify his wishes.

Look into your memories, you children who are reading this, and you will find that your mothers have all taken the same tender care of

mazes a few poor flowers and frail mosses which the snow had spared. But one morning when his father had awakened earlier than usual to go and see a sick man whom the night before he had left in a dying state, he flew into a violent passion on not finding his son at home. In vain the mother made some excuseThe harsh man was not deceived by it, and declared that the next day the child should be sent to the Latin school at the little town of Vixiæ. The mother burst into tears. The father declared that her tears would do no good; and when little Charles stole into the house, he found that dissensions and grief had entered it through his fault. He endeavored to excuse himself, promising his father a blind obedience for the future. The latter remained inflexible. He went out, ordering the mother to get his things ready, and that he would take him himself to Vixiæ next day.

Ah, how this sudden separation tore the hearts of the mother and child! The mother above all could not resolve to separate herself from her beloved son. Since his birth be had never left her for a single day.

"No, no! it is impossible," she cried, covering her tearful face with her hands.

Charles, distressed by the sight of his mother's tears, stifled his own grief, and tried to encourage her. He said:

"The town where I am going is near here, and we shall see each other often. Then, too, I will work well and fast in order to satisfy my father, and I shall return."

But the mother still wept. A single day of separation was a great anguish. However, knowing that her husband was inflexible in his res olutions, she began to pack her son's clothes in a little trunk. She at

put