The famous Boerhaave, the glory of the medical art, was appointed profeffor of botany at Leyden in 1709. His method was a mixture of Ray's, Herman's, and Tournefort's. The fubmarine and imperfect plants, which find no place in the fyftem of Herman, are borrowed by Boerhaave from Ray. Boerhaave's claffes are thirty-four in number, and fubdivide themselves into an hundred and four fections, which have for their characters the figure of the leaves, ftem, calyx, petals, and feeds; the number of petals, feeds, and capsules; the fubftance of the leaves; the fituation of the flowers, and their difference in point of fex. By this method Boerhaave arranged nearly fix thousand plants, the produce of the botanical garden at Leyden, which he carefully fuperintended for the fpace of twenty years, and left to his fucceffor Dr. Andrien Royen in a much more flourishing ftate, than he had himself received it.

Botanical writers were difpofed to walk in the track of their predeceffors. Few had fufficient courage to venture upon an unbeaten path. Morifon followed Cæfalpinus; Ray improved upon Morifon; Knaut abridged Ray; Herman formed himself partly on Morifon, and partly on Ray; and Boerhaave makes Herman his guide. Rivinus, a profeffor of phyfick and botany at Leipfic, was the firft, who in 1690, relinquishing the pursuit of affinities, and convinced of the infufficiency of the fruit, fet about a method, which fhould atone by its facility for the want of numerous relations and natural families. A

method purely artificial appeared to Rivinus the beft adapted for the purpofe of vegetable arrange ment. It refts upon the equality and number of the petals; a fyftem no lefs admired for its fimplicity, than for the regularity and uniformity of its plan.

The method of Knaut, Ludvig Pontedra, and Magnolius, will be prefented in our next number in the form of a table, together with feveral others from Cæfalpinus to Linnæus.

The celebrity of Tournefort requires that we fhould dwell a little on his history and character. Jofeph Pitton de Tournefort was born at Aix la Provence in 1656. He was educated in the Jefuits college in Aix, and like the great Boerhaave intended for a divine, but like that great man, quitted divinity for phyfick. In early life he was nearly as fond of anat omy and chemistry, as of botany. In 1679 he went to Montpelier, where he perfected himself in anatomy and phyfick. The botanick garden, eftablished in that city by Henry IV., rich as it was, could not fatisfy his unbounded curiofity. He ranfacked all the tracts of ground within more than ten leagues of Montpelier. Then he explored the Pyrenean mountains, the Alps, and returned, examined the vegetables in Provence, Languedoc, Dauphiné, and Catalo nia. He travelled through Spain and Portugal. He took his degree of doctor in phyfick in 1698, when he publifhed his Hiftory of the plants, which grow about Paris, together with an account of their use in medicine.

In the year 1700 Dr. Tournefort received an order from the

king to travel into Greece, Afia, and Africa, not only to difcover plants, but to make obfervations on natural hiftory in general, up on ancient and modern geography, and even upon the cuftoms, religion, and commerce of the people. From this grand tour he brought home one thoufand three hundred and fixty-fix NEW fpecies of plants, most of which ranged themselves under one or other of the fix hundred feventy-three genera he had already eftablifh ed, and for all the rest he had only twenty-five genera to create, without being obliged to augment the number of claffes. A circumftance, which fufficiently proves the advantage of a fyftem, to which fo many foreign and unexpected plants were eafily reducible. When Tournefort returned to Paris he thought of refuming the practice of phyfick, which he had facrificed to his botanick expedition; but experience fhews us, fays his biographer, fee Hift. de l'Acad. des Sciences. An. 1708, that, in every thing depending on the taste of the publick, efpecially affairs of this nature, delays are dangerous. Dr.Tournefort found it difficult to refume his practice. He was at the fame time profeffor of phyfick; the functions of the academy employed fome of his time; the arrangement of his memoirs ftill more of it. This

multiplicity of bufinefs affected his health, and, when in this uncom-. fortable state, he accidentally received a blow on his breast, which in a few months put an end to his active, ufeful, and honourable life, which happened in Dec. 1708.

The fyftem of Tournefort is too extenfive and intricate to allow us to give even an analyfis of it. We fhall exhibit a mere outline of his method, in a tabular form, in our next number; and fhall only obferve here, that Tournefort furpaffed all his predeceffors in fupplying a clue to the immenfe labyrinth, which the vegetable kingdom exhibited to the aftonifhed botanist. He gave the firft complete regular arrangement, and cleared the way for one ftill greater than himself. For in 1735* rofe the ft. of the botanick world, LINNEUS, of whom we have already spoken, and to whom we fhall frequently advert, as the fource of light and intelligence.t

The first sketch of Linnæus's fyftem was published in 1735, the last edition of the Syftema Vegetabilium in 1784; the Critica Botanica was published in 1787; the first edition of the Genera Plantarum the fame year, and the last in 1764; the first edition of the Species Plantarum in 1753, the fecond in 1762 and 1763.

botany from the writings of Linnæus, from the hiftory of the French Acad. of Sciences, from Miln, and J. J. Rousseau,

We have compiled this hiftory of

No. 1.

courfe. Burke, whofe mind was excurfive as light, and whofe judgment was as mature, as his

fancy was prolifick, has shown himfelf unequal to the compofition of an ironical effay. He is known to have failed in his fhort treatise on natural fociety, though he was politely flattered in its being afcribed to lord Bolingbroke. I believe no one now reads it, except from mere curiofity; regret, that Burke fhould have been the author, follows the perufal, and we are forced again to recollect the inequality of intellectual powers, evidenced in Euripides, Tully, and Burke.

I KNOW not why smoking a focial fegar fhould be feverely blamed. Valet auctoritas doctiffimorum bominum. Raleigh, Barrow, T. Warton, and Parr have fanctioned the ufe of tobacco, and the grave Dr. Johnson had a high opinion of its fedative qualities. It foothes the labours of the Lapland woodcutter, and relaxes the angry paffions of the Turkish bafhaw. An Hindoo loves the pleasant fumes of his cheroot after his religious bathing in the Ganges, and mi Caballero Caftellano thinks that day a poor portion of a wretched exiftence, in which he has not enjoyed his fegar and fiefta. Against the theological metaphor of king James, the differtation of fhilli-fhalli Rufh, and the pleafant lecture of the theoretical Waterhouse, I confidently oppofe the fimilar practice of widely diftant nations, and the authority of wit, virtue, and

erudition.

⚫ NOTHING can excufe the want of rectitude. No fituation in private life and no political dilemma can juftify a departure from Vol. II. No. 3. S

moral principle. Virtue and happinefs are infeparably connected; they are like the heat and the light of the fun, always warming, enlightening, and invigorating the habitations of man. If you can lay down in your bed each night, and according to the advice of Pythagoras review the tranfactions. of the day, and find that your heart has been honest and pure, where is the man under the canopy of the fky, with whom you would change fituation? There is none. Rejoice then and be glad.

Happinefs is always in your power, because you can always be virtuous.

If you wish to form your fon, or daughter, to gracefulness and virtue, let them read the Spectator and the Rambler, in which they will alfo difcover fome good poetry and much genuine criticism.

EVERY art and fcience has a peculiar phrafeology. The lawyer talks of avowries, formedons, demurrers, and certioraris; a chemift of muriate of foda, oxygenous gas, fepton, and hydrogene; the metaphyfician aftonifhes us with occult forms, entities, and realities, fence and identity; whilft the grave geometrician talks foberly of trapeziums, afymptotes and parallelopipedons. My logical tutor puzzled me and himself also in barbaras, fapefinos, concretes, and negatives pregnant; the next day I had to learn from the profellor of anatomy the ufes and properties of what he called aorta, ganglion, diaphragm, duodenum, and os hyoides; and the merchant fhould not fmile at profeffional pedantry, for who invented bot

ecations?

GLUTTONY is loathfome and immoral; perhaps epicurism is not. But exceffive attention to the palate is certainly dangerous; it leads to many vices, it may occafion various diforders; and furely it is rafh, unfkilful, and hazardous to approach the confines of vice. Who will venture to the edge of a precipice of tremendous depth? Who can afcertain the nearest circle of fafe approximation to an irrefiftible whirlpool? Fly then from the pleasures of the table; give no ear to the charm of the epicure, charming ever fo fweetly; turn from the road, that leads to the houfe of feafting and drinking, for the wild ftorm is over your head, and the earthquake is burfting beneath you.

SHENSTONE'S fhort obfervations on men and manners discover a mind not unacquainted with the world. There is in them much good sense arifing from experience, the mother of all useful knowledge; and it is conveyed in fo eafy, unembarraffed a style, that one might think, that he was never in debt. The Rev. Mr. Graves of Claverion, who knew him well, used to fay, that Johnfon's notion of Shenftone's continual embarrassment from fheriffs and writs was not true; and as that venerable pedeftrian is now dead, we perhaps may anticipate fome new and interesting notices from his papers refpecting the poetick gardener of the Leafowes. According to Smith, to be out of debt is one of the three effentials

general opinion that prevails refpecting Shenftone, I am afraid that he feldom experienced this great and enviable bleffing. From the epithet "irritabile," which Horace applies to the "genus vatum," I fhould fufpect, that the Roman bards were often harassed by their creditors; and they were probably not of a very different temper from their modern brethren, who, like Butler, Otway, Shenftone, and Goldsmith, were eminent for poverty, peevishness, and debt.

RELIGION is the only balm for a wounded fpirit. It is the only fure ftaff for the weary traveller through this wilderness of mifery and fin. What an inexpreffible grace does it throw over the countenance and actions of its fincere votaries? It purifies, it adorns, it ennobles our nature. By it we are lifted far above the little confiderations of an existence, short as the winter twilight, and unimportant as the faint vifion of a diftant ftar. We are led by its influence to contemplate "the first good, first perfect, and first fair"; and as without the aid of a telescope the fhipwrecked failor could never difcern in the far-off horizon the vessel that is to bring him relief, but might abandon himself to despair; fo without religion, man's views would be confined to a narrow circle of melancholy incidents and thoughts; and he might refign his mind to the dreadful idea, that the earth was his only home, and that death was an eternal fleep. But now he foars in certainty to other worlds of endless duration,

where he fhall join his parents and his friends in the prefence of a common God.

I KNOW not if the commentators well explained, "Nutbook! Nutbook! you lie." 2d part of Henry 4th, in Dol Tearsheet's addrefs to the beadle. From a late "critical review" I learn, that “nutk-hut" in the language of the Bazeegurs or Nuts of Hindustan signifies "rafcal" or "blackguard"; and that it was probably introduced into England by the gypfies, between whofe language and manners and thofe of the Nuts a confiderable fimilarity has been discovered by Mr. Richardfon, as detailed in the 7th vol. of the Afiatic Researches. This is curious and interefting. Nothing efcaped the all-pervading mind of Shakespeare. The chemift has melted every thing in his crucible....men, language, arts, gold, "wood, hay, and stubble." The enchanter had fomething better than Aladdin's lamp. He had the hoarinefs of the fage and the frenzy of the poet. He pierced into minutenefs with a glass. He grasped extenfion at will, and remains undifputed fovereign in the regions of intellect.

MR. Wilberforce has obtained fome celebrity from his religious publication; the doctrine is however confidered as too Calvinistick, and does not therefore perfectly fuit the liberality of English divines. I do not mean to difcufs the orthodoxy, or expedience of his fentiments. He may be an excellent theologian; he certainly is a moft miserable parliamentary orator. His figure is awkward

and his ftature fmall. He dresses very negligently, and looks more like a petty journeyman tailor, than a dignified reprefentative of a British parliament. He loves to hear himself talk; but unfortunately his hearers are not much pleafed with him, and therefore his long preaching affords an opportunity to take a lounge in the lobby, or a dish of tea in the coffee room. Sometimes he is not treated thus indifferently well; when the orator is tedious, as he often is, the members begin to fcrape and fneeze and hum gently, and blow their nofes, and though Wilberforce says, "I have nearly done," and though the speaker calls," order in the house, order at the bar, order in the gallery," yet the noises still continue; the low voice of the honourable member is fcarcely dif tinguishable; his diminutive, lean figure wriggles about; he twists his old hat; he fays, "Mr. Speaker," and fits down mortified and impotently revengeful. Mr. Pitt's tall form then rises in majesty; the house is mute as a church at midnight; the oration commences in fimplicity, continues in a regular flow, increases in dignity, grandeur, and force, concludes with mighty energy and irrefiftible effect; his friends are astonished, and his foes are confounded.

A CURIOUS dialogue might be compofed between Homer and Shakespeare in Elyfium, as to comparative fuperiority in the opinions of mankind. Homer fhould allege, that Alexander placed his Iliad in the most precious cafket of Darius ; Shakespeare might declare, that