his being a person of rank aggravated the guilt; and relates, without a single expression of disapproval, that the man "was burnt, or rather roasted by a slow fire, every refinement of cruelty being exhausted without altering the steady smile which remained on his countenance." The only remark made on the executioners is of an extenuating nature; they were, it seems, "zealous to revenge the personal insult which had been offered to the Emperor." The smile of the patient sufferer is termed "a steady and insulting smile;" and the Christians are sneered at for "the excessive commendations which they lavished on the memory of their hero and martyr." Gibbon's clerical adversaries would have fared much better in their conflict with him had they dwelt rather upon such passages as these, in which he stands self-convicted either of almost incurable prejudice or of bad faith, and not attempted the hopeless act of charging him with ignorance and with false quotation.

The charge of indecency has often been advanced against Gibbon's 'History,' and by none more severely than by a writer who was combating on his side, in one, at least, of his theological controversies, and a writer whose own verses, any more than his familiar conversation, gave him but little right to make this complaint. Porson* declares that, "Were the History' anonymous, he should guess that the shameful obscenities which pervade the whole, but especially the last volumes, were written by some debauchee, who, having, from age or excess, survived the practices of lust, still indulged himself in the luxury of speculation, or exposed the impotent imbecility

*Letters to Archdeacon Travis.' Preface.

after he had lost the vigour of passion." This censure is certainly much too sharp, and it is truly astonishing that Gibbon felt it not. Delighted with Porson's alliance against Travis, and pleased with the panegyric of his own diligence and accuracy which the great Grecian had penned, he only says that "the sweetness of his praise is tempered by a reasonable mixture of acid." He also defends himself against the charge of indecency as preferred by others, and his principal argument is the exceedingly feeble, and even doubtful one, that his English text is chaste, and that "all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language." It is undeniable, however, that, after allowing Porson's invective to be exaggerated, there can be no excuse for some of the notes

-as those on Elagabalus, and Mahomet, and Theodora, which throw little, if any, light upon the subject, and only serve to pander for a prurient imagination.

SIR JOSEPH BANKS.

Ir is rare to observe a name among the active and successful promoters of science, and which yet cannot easily find a place in its annals from the circumstance of its not being inscribed on any work, or connected with any remarkable discovery. Almost all the philosophers of both ancient and modern times have left us writings in which their doctrines were delivered, and the steps made by their labours were recorded. The illustrious exception of Socrates almost ceases to be one, from the memory of his opinions being preserved by two of his disciples in their immortal works; and the important discoveries of Archimedes and of Pythagoras are known distinctly enough in the books of ancient geometry, to leave no doubt resting upon their claims to the admiration and the gratitude of all ages. The lost works of the ancient geometers evidently afford no exception to the general remark, since they once existed, and contained the discoveries of their authors.

It must, however, be observed, that the circumstance of a cultivator of science having left no works to after ages is merely accidental. He may have enriched philosophy with his achievements, and yet never have recorded them himself. Thus, had Black only made the great discovery of latent heat and specific heat, he would have been justly considered in all times as one of the greatest benefactors of natural science, and yet the history of that

splendid discovery would only have been found in the memory of those who had heard his lectures; his only work being confined to the other discovery of fixed air, and the nature of the alkaline earths. To take a yet more remarkable instance;-how little of Watt's great and lasting fame depends on any written work which he has left! The like may be truly said of Arkwright; nay, the most important of inventions, the art of printing, is disputed by two names, Coster and Guttenberg, neither of whom is connected with the composition of any literary work whatever.

As men who have by their researches advanced the bounds of science,-" inventas aut qui vitam excoluerunt per artes," may never have given any written works to the world, and yet merit a high place among the greatest philosophers, so may others who have filled the less exalted but highly useful sphere of furthering the progress of the sciences or the arts, deserve a distinguished place among philosophers for the same reason which entitles authors to such a station, although they may never have contributed by any discoveries to the advancement of the sciences which they cultivated. The excellent and eminent individual whose life we are about to contemplate falls within this description; for although his active exertions for upwards of half a century left traces most deeply marked in the history of the natural sciences, and though his whole life was given up to their pursuit, it so happened, that with the exception of one or two tracts upon agricultural and horticultural questions, he never gave any work of his own composition to the world, nor left behind him anything, beyond his extensive correspondence with other

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cultivators of science. It is from this circumstance that not even an attempt has ever as yet been made to write the history of Sir Joseph Banks. And yet, what so worthy of contemplation as the history of one who loved science for its own sake, who delighted in the survey of important facts connected with the study of nature, or tracing interesting truths belonging to the same branch of knowledge; whose pursuit of knowledge was wholly disinterested, not even stimulated by the hope of fame as the reward of his labours? And who better deserved the name of a philosopher, than he whose life was devoted to the love of wisdom, whose rich reward was the delight of the study, whose more noble ambition left to others the gratification of recording their progress in books, and filling the mouths of men with their names? Much of what is explained, touching the real pleasures of science, in the life of D'Alembert, is applicable to the career of Sir Joseph Banks.*

He was of an ancient and wealthy family, established since the reign of Edward III., first in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and afterwards in the county of Lincoln, where they possessed ample estates from the end of the seventeenth century; and a considerable accession of fortune came to them early in the eighteenth, by marriage with an heiress in Derbyshire, named Hodgkinson, whose estates, by a shifting use in a settlement, were severed from those in Lincolnshire till 1792, when the whole fortune united in the person of Sir Joseph.

He was born at Argyle Buildings, in London, on the 2d of February, 1743, O. S., according to a note in his own handwriting which lies before me, contrary to several

* See Life of D'Alembert, and Appendix.