For the Monthly Anthology. TO CONSTANCE. YES, my dear Conftance, the interesting science, whofe tendency you have inveftigated and justly eulogized, does indeed fhed new light on the beft interefts of man; and though to the mere naturalift it is little more than an amufement, to the chriftian botanif it prefents a chaplet of never fading flowers. And furely, my friend, fince the love of nature is intimately connected with that of her Author, it is "devoutly to be wifh'd" that a tafte for all her fublime and touching beauties might be univerfally and affiduously cultivated. If the ftudy of her lowlieft children tends to contemplations the moft elevating; if the vegetable world demonftrates the wifdom, the goodness, and the power of the creator, ought not an attention to grander harmonies to fublimate the foul and all its capacities? To a well toned mind and refined tafte inexhauftible fources of pleasure are opened. Change of feafons prefents objects ever new; and even in the fhort compafs of day and night, the fenfes and the imagination are regaled by a ceaseless variety of beauties. The mere connoiffeur who criticifes nature, as he does the fine arts, is infenfibly animated and purified by it. The cheerful morning invigorates his mind and his affections; and the ferene evening, while it foothes the jarring paffions awakened by the events of the day, communicates to his heart that tenderness and benevolence, of which it feems the reflected image. *******, January 15, 1805. But how are thefe advantages enhanced, thefe pleatures ennobled, to the being who beholds the great Artificer through the medium of his works! In the fimplicity and grandeur of that fyftem, which bleffes our world with alternate light and fhade, he views the goodness of a Father, and adores the majesty of a God; whilft every proof of his omnipo tence and omniprefence fills the heart with that fweet confidence, which is an antidote to all the ills of life. And when the weft is fplendid with crimfon and gold, how fuperiour to the pleasure of the painter and the poet is the rapture of gratitude which raises the foul to him, by whofe law grey maffes of vapour are transformed into objects pleafing to the eye, animating to the fancy, and elevating to the feelings of the admiring obferver! I know your opinion of Cowper, the faithful poet of nature and of chriftianity, too well to imagine you can have perufed his life, written by the elegant and affectionate Hayley, without pleafure. There is genuine fatisfaction in finding the author whose works we admire, worthy our efteem and confidence as a man ; his precepts acquire a ftrength and grace, when illuftrated by his own example, which nothing else can give to them. We are grateful to the good-natured biographer, who, by prefenting us with a favourable portrait, adds energy to the page whence we derive wifdom and delight. But there are dangers in this fpecies of biogra fon? phy; and on the whole, which or the stern investigation of Johndo you think moft beneficial to the caufe of virtue and fcience, the tender partiality of Hayley, Hoping for an answer, I bid you an affectionate farewel. CORNELIA¡ For the Monthly Anthology. LETTERS TO LEINWHA, TEACHER OF MORALITY IN THE RECESSES OF LATINGUIN FROM A WAN DERER IN THE WEST. LETTER IV. THOUGH the people of this country are a nation of merchants, their paffion for letters is not extinguished by trade. It is continually ftruggling with the obftacles that oppose it, and in its efforts to furmount them you may behold the glory of genius vanquifhed by adverfity, and fmiling fuperiour to neglect. I always thought that a fevere law in Latinguin, which prohibits any one to write a book, until he fhall have paffed an examination by the great Crit, upon the penalty of lofing the thumb and firft finger of his right hand, and having his belly blown up with the fame quill which was inftrumental in committing the of fence. The lawgiver here has been more humane; there is nothing fo hoftile to literature in in all their code. Every one has an unlimited right to think for himfelf,and write what he pleafes. Almost all claffes avail themselves of this indulgence. The mechanick, when the day is done, lays down his inftruments and retires to his apartment; he examines the edicts of his national affembly, and furnishes the printer with his comments on their proceedings. He arraigns their judgment, or commends their wifdom. Vol. II. No. 2. L He calls upon his fellow-citizens to co-operate with him in oppofing their defigns, or adopting their measures; and concludes with declaring his difinterefted zeal for the welfare of himself, his country, and pofterity. There are others, who write in à manner called " periodical." Many of thefe productions I fent you by the last caravan. By them you may devife the purfuit of thefe authors. You will wonder perhaps at what you may imagine a want of method, the choice of expreffion, and the typographical negligence, which fometimes feem to violate the rules of compofition. But, as they are written for the whole world, they are conveyed to the publick by the fame vehicle, which contains the wants of the needy; a schedule of the merchant's articles which he offers for fale; an account of foreign and domeftick intelligence; with a catalogue of murders and marriages. To this may be added another reafon : the writers are generally thofe, who wifely ftudy originality, rather than elegance; they are not restrained by thofe forms, which would only ferve to abridge their performances; nor overloaded with reading, which would unavoidably fteal into their compofitions; and, as their avow ed object is to reform the errours of the age, furely none are better calculated than they, whofe minds are unbiaffed by any favourite system, and unoccupied by any thing but their object. Then fhall the mufick of the spheres be ftill, Or if not ftill, lefs fweet, fair bird, than thine; Thy voice shall rife, the air shall seem a hill, fhall twine. Return, fweet bird; sweet bird, again return; Nor let this breast thy absence, Redbreaft, mourn. DELLA AURORA BOREALIA. I find the women here are alfo writers; and fome of their productions are not inferiour to thofe of the men. They are free from unneceflary exactnefs, and minutenefs of style, beautifully mifcellaneous, and abounding with tales. The love of imitating the bards prevails with thefe females; in this character they affuage the pangs of love when they defcribe its delight. My friend, whofe poem I fo lately mentioned to you, told me he had fold all his copies." I fuppofe him to mean the printed books of his poem. In the courfe of his vifit, he a paper full of verfes, which he faid were written by a lady of his acquaintance, to whom he has promifed to introduce me. She is a woman of great literature and uncommon virtue. I transcribe thefe verfes for your collection of 1. Differtation on the zibeta occidenwritings. 66 gave me I have not yet difcovered the fchools of the philofophers. I have however met with a procla mation in a common paper, from one of their learned focieties, purporting to be the contents of a new book. I wished much to fend it to you, but as I could not, its matters are here faithfully tranfcribed. talis. CONTENTS. 2. A new method to kill ducks. 3. An account of a spot seen on the fun's difk, July 13, 1781. 4. Origin of the word Dun. 5. Thunder and lightning, the cause of 6. Account of a bone, dug up near a falt mountain. 7. Account of the discovery of longitude. 8. Commerce of the United States, how 9. Concerning the planetary fyftem. 12. Improvements in agriculture. For the Monthly Anthology. THE BOTANIST. HAVING exhibited a biographical sketch of that eminent phyfician and naturalift, LINNAEUS, we mean now to give our readers a concife hiftory of botany, from the earliest ages until the fcience came finifhed from the hands of that great master. Berim in the Greek language means an herb, whence is derived botany, which at this day fignifies the science relating to vegetables, for which the ancients had no name, as it was not in their days erected into a regular sci ence. Although botany as a fcience may appear to fome a ftudy too dull for an exalted and refined genius; yet if we caft our eyes back on the earlier ages, and trace this branch of knowledge down to our own times, we fhall find, that it has been cultivated by those of the brightest parts, and careffed by men of great diftinction. We need only mention him, who is called by way of pre-eminence "the wife man." Though born to a throne and deftined to rule over a powerful people, yet was SOLOMON fo captivated with the charms of botany, that he is faid in the fcriptures to have known plants "from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyffop that fpringeth out of the wall" and we find in his "book of wifdom," that he not only "knew the diver fities of plants, but the virtues of their roots." SOLOMON flourished about 170 years after the fiege of Troy, or in the year of the world 2129, and is faid to be the first botanilt No. 7. on our records of mankind. But on examining the oldeft book we have, we find an account of a plan for establishing a botanick garden as early, as 899 years before Chrift. See the xxi. chapter of the 1ft book of KINGS, 2d verfe. I can find no mention of a bo tanist, from the glorious SoLoMON down to the venerable father of medicine, Hippocrates. He gives us the names and virtues of 234 plants, but no defcription by which we can ascertain what they were. Cotemporary with the father of phyfick, lived Cratevas, whom he calls the prince of botanifts. A confiderable space after him appeared Theophraflus ; who wrote ten books on plants, of which nine have reached our hands. These merit the highest encomiums. Theophrafus was a difciple of Ariftotle, and flourished in the third century, he may juftly be confidered as the father of botany. He treats of the vegetable life; and the anatomy and conftruction of plants, and of their origin and propagation. He divides vegetables into feven claffes, which divifion is founded on the generation of plants, their place of growth, their fize, as trees and thrubs, their use, and their lactefcence, which laft circumftance refpects every kind of liquor, of whatever colour, that flows in great abundance from them when cut. This golden monument of botany cannot be too ftrongly recommended to the curious. The Romans were devoted to Victoria, a deity fo adored by that rough people, that they paid little attention to the fciences, Pliny fays that they were ftrangers to botany till Pompey conquered Mithridates, the most philofophick king of the age. His obfervations on the medicinal virtues of plants falling into the hands of Pompey were, by his orders, tranf lated into latin. Diofcorides, though by birth a Grecian, lived under the Roman empire. He was the next botanist of note af ter Theophraftus. It is highly probable, that feveral botanifts lived between the time of Theo phrastus and Diofcorides, a space of nearly 400 years; yet if we except Antonius Mufa, Euphorbius, and Æmilius Macer, who was a foldier, poet, and botanit, and the first who clothed botany in poetry, we find no mention of any one who paid attention to that fcience. Diofcorides mentions about 600 plants; 410 of which he defcribed, together with their medicinal virtues; about 500 of them were mentioned by the father of botany. Diofcorides arranged plants, from their ufes in medicine and domeftick economy, into four claffes, viz. aromaticks, alimentary vegetables, medicinal, and vinous ; a vague and fallacious diftinction. eller, and might have increased the catalogue of plants; but he contented himself in defcanting on the medicinal virtues of thofe mentioned by his predeceffor. After the 6th century, learning was almost entirely abolished by the Goths. Whilst a northern fwarm of barbarians were deftroying tafte and learning in the western empire, the Arabians, who were followers of the renowned Mahomet, over-ran the eastern. By conquering Greece, they monopolized all the writings of that famous nation. During 400 years there was no attempt to draw from its obfcurity the botany of the ancients. At length one of the Saracen califs ordered the Greek books on med icine to be tranflated into Arabick, or their mixed Saracen language; and botany, which is a branch of medicine, attracted their notice. Serapio collected the Greek and Arabian authors, who had written on plants; and after him followed Razis, Avicenna, Averhoës, Actuarius, and feveral others of lefs note. They were more attentive to the materia medica in general, than to plants in particular. To themwe owe the knowledge of fugar, of diftilled fpirits, of rhubarb, fenna, and most of the milder catharticks. Pliny, in his immenfe compilation, called the hiftory of the world, mentions 400 plants more After a dark and difmal peri, than are to be found in Diofco- od, emphatically ftyled the barbar, rides; and yet he lived but about ous or dark ages, a dawn of light forty years after him. He, who began to appear, firft in Italy, wishes to fee all the natural hif- and from thence, a fecond time, tory of the ancients at a glance, over the world, when Medicine,. may confult Pliny to advantage. and her hand-maid Botany, eThe famous Galen flourished merged from the gloom of barabout 130 years after Chrift. barifm; for in 1470 Theodore GaHe was for that day a great trav-za, a Greek refugee at Rome, re |