532 R. Red Hair,-Bentley's Miscellany. S. Story of Giovanni Belzoni,-See Belzoni. MISCELLANEOUS.-Will and Way, 27; Death of W. Wordsworth, Life of-Athenæum. . 314 145 224 264 335 368 Ir has been truly remarked by a modern | French writer, that the philosophy of the eighteenth century was the daughter of the Renaissance. What the latter had done for the arts, the former effected for the science of ideas. The same motive power which drew Michael Angelo, in later days hurried away the thinkers themselves towards naturalism. The sixteenth century, great as it undoubtedly was, had discerned the beauties of the exterior world but through the veil of pagan antiquity. On the other hand, religious scruples had deterred men from fixing an observant eye upon the magic of the universe. It required a renewal, a revivification of ideas, to enable man to aspire towards the contemplation of the magnificence of nature. This change was brought about by philoso phy, and in her train came the observation of facts, and the power of reasoning. The barrier which had so long arrested human intellect upon the threshold of nature's temple was overthrown; two men appeared in the world about the same time, of whom one alone would have sufficed to illustrate the memorable epoch which gave them birth,Buffon and Linnæus. These two great naturalists possessed, it is true, nought in common, save their genius. VOL. XXIIL NO. I. Providence, which had placed their birth in the same year, at an interval of four months only, was pleased to separate them, however, by a great number of contrasts. Linnæus was born in an obscure cottage in Sweden; Buffon, in a château of France. Compelled to enter the workshop of a shoemaker in order to gain a livelihood, Linnæus learned to think while hammering at his leather. Buffon, surrounded by all the seductions of wealth and luxury, scarcely exercised his will, save against the advances of fortune. The direction of their mental faculties was scarcely less opposite, for both, in after life, preserved in their scientific characters the traces of those first influences by which their early years had been affected. Linnæus showed himself, above all, the artizan; Buffon, the artist of Nature. George Louis le Clerc de Buffon was born on the 7th of September, 1707, at Montbar, in Burgundy. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, was counsellor to the parliament of his native province; he gave his children a solid education, leaving them free to decide for themselves upon the choice of a profession. On leaving the college of Dijon, where he had gained several honors, accident threw the youthful Buffon into the society of an 1 Englishman of nearly his own age,-the young Duke of Kingston,-whose tutor, a man of great learning, inspired him with a taste for science. In their company he travelled through the greater portion of France and Italy, and afterwards passed a few months in England. Buffon's literary career began with a series of translations. On his return to his native country, he translated into French two English works, the "Vegetable Statics" of Dr. Hales, and Newton's Treatise on Fluxions." These translations, and the prefaces which he adjoined thereto, were the first essays which, as it were, revealed him to himself; for from this time forth he quitted not the path of research into which his genius had led him. He wrote successively several papers upon geometry, physics, and rural economy, which opened for him the doors of the Academie des Sciences, into which body he was elected at the age of six-and-twenty: still, it is true, a mere youth as regards length of days, but young as he was, and in the infancy only of his genius, men whose hair had grown gray in study already regarded him as their brother. In the year 1739 he was appointed intendant of the Jardin des Plantes, then termed the Jardin du Roi, and from that hour commenced this great life, and this new glory of the union of eloquence with science, of which, until then, France had been utterly ignorant. Descartes, it is true, had written with genius, but with a genius which was rather that of the philosophic style than that of eloquence. Fontenelle had brought to bear upon the sciences all the resources of a language at once the most ingenious, the most polished, and the most brilliant, that an age of wit and intellectual acquirements had ever spoken. Buffon brought eloquence. Prior to the eighteenth century the field of science in France had been arid and confused. Pliny had written what might be termed the Romance of Nature, and the philosophers, or rather the bookworms of the middle ages, had followed the traces of antiquity with servile devotion. While rendering ample justice to his predecessors, and above all, bestowing a full meed of praise on the labors of the ancients-Aristotle and Pliny-where praise was due, Buffon opened a new paththat of observation and experiment. Convinced that the works of the human mind resist the attacks of time only through the style in which they are given to posterity, he applied the talent of the accomplished writer to the treatment of the natural sciences. The principal characteristic of this language is its magnificence. Buffon's style fails, perhaps, in flexibility and variety; simplicity is frequently wanting where it could be used with touching effect: but still he is great in great things, and when he rises with his subject we feel that he has got wings. It is a remark which has been made in our own day, and which would have flattered Buffon, that the term colorist was unknown in the language of Bossuet and Racine. Buffon is, above all, a great painter; he has been termed the painter of nature, and, without flattery be it said, that he well merits the beautiful title which he himself conferred on Plato: namely, that of the painter of ideas. The almost accidental circumstances which led to the appointment of Buffon as Intendant of the Jardin du Roi, are deserving of mention, as affording another illustration of the truth of the old axiom, that great events frequently spring from trifling causes; for we have every reason to suppose, that had it not been for this fortuitous circumstance, Buffon would never have turned his attention to the study of zoology. The superintendence of the Jardin des. Plantes had always been attached to the post of first physician to the king, and as what depends upon one man, depends also upon his tastes and habits, and has, consequently, a very variable destiny, it so happened that a certain first-physician, indiffered to the science of botany, had neglected this garden, which had consequently fallen into such a state of decay as to attract the notice of government. An inquiry into the management of the Jardin du Roi having been instituted, it was finally determined that the superintendence of the chief physician should be abolished; and the direction of the garden being deemed worthy of special and continuous attention, the post, under the title of Intendancy, was conferred on Dufay, a man of learning and science. Dufay, after holding the post for some years, having been taken seriously ill, was visited by Hellot the chemist, member of the Academie des Sciences, who, finding that his friend was past recovery, said to him, "Buffon is the only man enabled by his strength of character to continue the work of regeneration begun by you; quench then in your bosom all petty feelings of rivalry, and name Buffon as your successor. The application to the minister is contained in the letter I now hold in my hand: sign it." Dufay signed the application, which was favorably received by the minister, M. de Maurepas; and on the death of Dufay, Buffon received the appoint ment. In everything which Buffon has written we find an order, a coherency, a visible generation of ideas, and in all these ideas we can readily discover and separate those which are his own from those which he has borrowed from others, and especially from the three men whose works he had the most deeply studied-Aristotle, Descartes, and Liebnitz. We follow him step by step through those profound combinations from out the depth of which he brought to light so many new views; for all he advances he gives a reason; and he himself has left us in his works the safest as well as the most learned history of his meditations and his thoughts. The history of animals, or as we say today, Zoology, is composed of the history of each species taken separately, and of the methodical distribution of all the species compared together. Now, of these two things Buffon has marvellously comprehended the first: the history, properly so called; but he has never thoroughly understood the second, or the methodical distribution. Buffon has never clearly discerned what is termed method in natural history. Sometimes he confounds it with the description or the history. "The true method," he says, "is the complete description, and the exact history of each thing in particular." As he advanced with his great work, however, he conformed himself more and more to the ideas, and by the ideas to the language of the naturalists; he felt more and more the necessity of ranging objects according to their affinities, and, as Cuvier has well remarked, "On reaching his history of birds, he tacitly submitted himself to the necessity under which we all are, of classifying our ideas in order to our obtaining a clear representation of the whole." We may add, that he did not wait until then. When, after having described one after another, and without any methodical aim, the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the pig, the dog, the cat, all the domestic animals, in short, he proceeds to the wild animals; more than once, and evidently designedly so, he places together kindred species; for instance, he places the deer near the roebuck, the polecat near the martin, &c., &c. On coming to the monkeys he places them all together, and even distributes them by distinct groups according to very good characters. But it is above all in his History of Birds that, as Cuvier remarks, his march becomes really methodical,-" In place," says Buffon himself, "of treating birds one by one, that is to say, by distinct and separate species, I will unite them, several together under one genus." And this he does; for to each principal species, or that which he takes as a type, he adjoins all the species, whether of our own or foreign climates, which agree with it; by these means he forms regular groups, families, and genera; and he almost always respects the great and true characteristics. When we speak, then, of the ideas of Buffon regarding method, we must take into consideration the epoch in which he held them, and, if we may so express ourselves, their date. No man, perhaps, more constantly modified his thoughts than Buffon, because no man more constantly elaborated them. We have just had an example of this: Buffon commenced by ridiculing method, and he ended by striking out and pursuing a very good one of his own. Yet for all this, Buffon never comprehended what, considering it from the philosophical side, that is to say, the true side of the problem, really constitutes method. Method is the expression of the relation of things. Method subordinates particular relations to the general relations, and the general relations to those still more general, which are laws. This is an order of ideas which Buffon had no suspicion of. Up to his time, method seemed intended to lead to the names rather than to the relations of things. After his time, the true object appeared; but to attain this end, all that long labor of comparativeanatomy was required which Buffon did not see, and on which, had he even been enabled to see it, he would not perhaps have bestowed all the labor requisite, for he possessed the patience of genius, and not that of the senses. When Buffon commenced his great work, he was no more an anatomist than he was a zoologist; he became a zoologist later, as we have seen, but never an anatomist, strictly speaking; and yet, on the one hand, he did much for anatomy, and on the other, he owed much to it. Buffon is the first who ever joined the anatomical, that is to say, the interior, description to the exterior description of the species. He it was who called and inspired his friend and fellow-laborer Dau-benton, and by his hands laid the first |