pupils crowded around him, listening to him with eagerness, and treasuring up with veneration his slightest words. Among his many services to the Garden must be reckoned the education of his nephew, who has made of botany a regular science, by developing and perfecting the natural method.

M. Desfontaines was appointed Professor of Botany about the year 1786, immediately after his return from Barbary with the plants of which he has since published the history. At the period of his appointment, the Botanic Garden was already very rich; and the instruction was no longer limited to the demonstration of medicinal plants; for the progress of the science since Tournefort, by the intermediate labours of Linnæus, Adanson, and de Jussieu, authorized and required a more philosophic plan. M. Desfontaines was the first to perceive the importance of a general knowledge of the nature of vegetables, the functions peculiar to each organ, and the pheno mena of the different periods of their developement, in order duly to understand their generic and specific characters; he, therefore, divided his course into two parts; the first he devoted to the anatomy and physiology of vegetables; the second to the classification and description of the genera and species. From that period, botanical instruction was no longer confined to the exterior forms of plants, but comprised their affinities, uses, and modifications. To the method of teaching adopted in the King's Garden since 1788, are to be ascribed those works which have made vegetable physiology the basis of botany, and led to the applications of this science in agriculture and the arts.

Buffon died on the 16th of April, 1788, and his place of Chief Intendant of the King's Garden was given to the Marquis de la Billarderie. We come now to the third and last period of our history, that which extends from the death of Buffon down to the present time, including the epoch of the new organization, to which we have already occasionally alluded. On the 20th of August, 1790, M. Lebrun made a report, in the name of the committee of finances of the Constituent Assembly, on the state of the King's Garden, in which its expenses were estimated at 92,222 francs; 12,777 being necessary for repairs. This re

port, which was the signal for a new organization, was followed by the draught of a decree proposing the reduction of the Intendant's salary from 12,000 to 8000 francs; the suppression of several places, particularly that of commandant of the police of the Garden; an increased stipend to some of the professors; the creation of a chair of natural history, &c. &c.

The disorders of the revolution beginning at this period, M. de la Billarderie withdrew from France, and his place of Intendant was filled by the appointment of M. de St Pierre, in 1792. St Pierre undertook the direc tion of the King's Garden at a difficult conjuncture. That distinguished writer was gifted with eminent talents as a painter of nature, and a master of the milder affections; he knew at once to awaken both the heart and the imagination; but he wanted exact notions in science, and his timid and melancholy character deprived him of that knowledge of the world, and that energy of purpose, which are alike requisite for the exertion of authority. Nevertheless, he was precisely the man for the crisis. His quiet and retired life shielded him from persecution, and his prudence was a safeguard to the establishment. He presented several memoirs to the ministry, containing some very sound regulations, conceived in a spirit of economy which circumstances rendered necessary. In these memoirs may always be noticed the following words:-"After consult ing the elders," by which term he designated the persons who had been long attached to the establishment, though without an official share in its administration.

At a period so pregnant with disaster to the fortunes of the King, it may well be supposed that the King's wild beasts would not meet with a kinder treatment than the rest of the family. In fact, the Menagerie at Versailles being abandoned, and the animals likely to perish of hunger, M. Couturier, intendant of the King's domains in that city, offered them, by order of the minister, to M. St Pierre; but, as he had neither convenient places for their reception, nor means of providing for their subsistence, he prevailed on M. Couturier to keep them, and imme diately addressed a memoir to the government on the importance of establishing a Menagerie in the Garden,

This address had the desired effect, and proper measures were ordered to be taken for the preservation of the animals, and their removal to the Museum; which, however, was deferred till eighteen months after.

A decree of the Legislative Assembly having about this time suppressed the universities, the faculties of medicine, &c., there was reason to fear that the King's Garden would have been involved in the same proscription; but, as the people were led to believe that it was destined for the culture of medicinal plants, and that the laboratory of chemistry was a manufactory of saltpetre, the establishment escaped destruction. At last, on the 10th of June, 1793, a decree for the organization was obtained, chiefly by the exertions of M. Lakanal, President of the Committee of Public Instruction. The following are some of the most essential articles :

"The establishment shall henceforth be called the Museum of Natural History.

"Its object shall be the teaching of Natural History in all its branches. "Twelve courses of lectures shall be given in the Museum. 1. A course of Mineralogy. 2. A course of General Chemistry. 3. A course of Chemistry applied to the Arts. 4. A course of Botany. 5. A course of Rural Botany. 6. A course of Agriculture. 7 and 8. Two courses of Zoology. 9. A course of Human Anatomy. 10. A course of Comparative Anatomy. 11. A course of Geology. 12. A course of Iconography."

The third section provides for the formation of a library, where all the books on natural history in the public repositories, and the duplicates of those in the National Library, shall be assembled; and also the drawings of plants and animals taken from nature in the Museum.

By the above decree, twelve chairs were established, without naming the professors; the distribution of their functions being left to the officers themselves. These were MM. Daubenton, keeper of the Cabinet, and Professor of Mineralogy in the College of France; Fourcroy, Professor of Chemistry; Brogniart, Demonstrator; Desfontaines, Professor of Botany; De Jussieu, Demonstrator; Portal, Professor of Anatomy; Bertrud, Demonstrator; Lamarck, Botanist of the

Cabinet, and Keeper of the Herbarium; Faujas St Fond, Assistant Keeper of the Cabinet, and Corresponding Secretary; Geoffrey, Sub-demonstrator of the Cabinet; Vanspaendonck, Painter; Thouin, First Gardener.

The general administration of the Cabinet belonged to the Assembly, and the care of the collections to the several Professors; the places of keeper and assistant keepers of the Cabinet were therefore suppressed. But, as it was necessary to have some person charged with the key of the galleries, the preservation of the objects, and the reception of visitors, these were devolved on M. Lucas, who had passed his life in the establishment, and enjoyed the confidence of M. Buffon. M. André Thouin, being made Professor of Agriculture, M..John Thouin was appointed First Gardener. Four places of Assistant Naturalist were created, for the arrangement and preparation of objects under the direction of the Professors; and these appointments were in favour of MM. Desmoulins, Dufresne, Valenciennes, and Deleuze,the two first for Zoology, the others for Mineralogy and Botany; and three painters were attached to the establishment-M. Marechal, and the brothers, Henry and Joseph Redouté. At the same time the Library was disposed for the reception of the books and drawings; which last already filled sixty-four port-folios.

The animals were removed from the Menagerie at Versailles in 1794. The report of the Committee of Public Instruction approved the regulations of the Professors, and fixed the organization of the Museum in its present form, with the exception of slight modifications exacted by the change of circumstances. A law in conformity, of the 11th of December, 1797, created a third chair of Zoology, to which M. de Lacépède was appointed, gave the whole administration of the establishment to the Professors, increased their salary from 2800 to 5000 francs; fixed the expenses of the following year at 194,000 francs; and ordained the purchase of certain additional lands for the Garden.

Notwithstanding this apparent progress, however, the delightful region of which we are now sketching the history, began, in common with every other institution, to experience the effects of what the ingenious Professor

Feldborg would have called," the wretched state of the world at that juncture." The reduced state of the finances, the depreciation of the funds, the cessation of foreign commerce, and the employment of every species of revenue and industry for the prosecution of the war, "bella horrida bella," were serious hindrances to the project of improvement. Painful contrasts were visible in all directions. Houses and lands of great value were annexed to the Garden, and magnificent collections were acquired; yet funds were wanting to pay the workmen, and your common potato was cultivated in beds destined for the rarest and most beautiful of exotic flowers. Ere long, however, some of the official administrators of the Museum were called to situations in the government of the nation, and used their influence in favour of their favourite haunts-"loving the spot which once they gloried

in.

At the end of the year 1794, the Amphitheatre of the Garden was finished in its present state, and in it was opened, on the 25th of January, 1795, the Normal School; an extraordinary institution, but founded on an unfeasible and visionary plan. It was fancied that men already ripe in years, by a few lectures from eminent masters, might be rendered capable of extending instruction, and diffusing through the provinces the elements of science, which very few of themselves had been prepared by previous education to understand. Every reasonable man felt the impossibility of realizing such a scheme, and the institution fell of itself soon after. It had the good effect, however, of exciting the public attention and fixing it upon an establishment, become, as it were, the type of all institutions that might be formed for the study of nature.

The most important event connected with the history of the Garden which occurred about this period, was the voyage of Captain Baudin. In 1796, this gentleman informed the officers of the Museum, that, during a long residence in Trinidad, he had formed a rich collection of natural history, which he was unable to bring away, but which he would return in quest of if they would procure him a vessel. The proposition was acceded to by the government, with the injunction that Captain Baudin should take with him

four naturalists. The persons appointed to accompany him were Maugé and Levillain, for zoology; Ledru, for botany; and Reidley, gardener of the Museum, a man of active and indefatigable zeal.

Captain Baudin weighed anchor from Havre on the 30th September, 1796. He was wrecked off the Canary Isles, but was furnished with another vessel by the Spanish government, and shaped his course towards Trinidad. That island, however, had in the meantime fallen into our hands. The party, being thus unable to land, repaired first to St Thomas, and then to Porto Rico, where they remained about a year, and then returned to Europe. They entered the port of Frecamp in June, 1798. The collections, forwarded by the Seine, arrived at the Museum on the 12th of July following.

Never had so great a number of living plants, and especially of trees, from the West Indies been received at once; there were one hundred large tubs, several of which contained stocks from six to ten feet high. They had been so skilfully taken care of during the passage, that they arrived in full vegetation, and succeeded perfectly in the hot-houses. The two zoologists brought back a numerous collection of quadrupeds, birds, and insects. That of birds, made by Maugé, was particularly interesting, from their perfect preservation, and from the fact, that the greater part were new to the Mu

seum.

In 1798, the Professors presented a Memoir to the government, exposing the wants of the Museum. The magnificent collections which had been received were still in their cases, liable to be destroyed by insects, and comparatively useless for want of room to display them. There were no means of nourishing the animals, because the contractors who were not paid refused to make further advances. The lions became sulky for lack of food; and even the tigers shewed symptoms of displeasure, and forewent their" wonted cheerfulness." The same distress existed in 1799, which was the more to be regretted from the value of the recent collections. Of these the more important were the following :-In June, 1795, arrived the cabinet of the Stadtholder, rich in every branch of natural history, and especially of zoology. In February, M. Desfontaines

gave the Museum his collection of insects from the coast of Barbary. In November of the same year, a collection was received from the Low Countries; and that of precious stones was removed from the Mint to the Museum. In February, 1797, the Minister procured the African birds, which had served for the drawings of Levaillant's celebrated work. In 1798, the collection formed by Brocheton in Guyana, and the numerous objects of animated and vegetable nature collected under the tropics by Captain Baudin and his indefatigable associates, filled the hot-houses and the galleries of the Museum.

The government manifested the most unceasing and lively concern for the establishment, and did everything in its power to promote its interests; but penury repressed their noble rage," and rendered it impossible to furnish the necessary funds for the arrangement of the collections, the repairs of the buildings, the payment of the salaries, and the nourishment of the animals. These last-named gentry were indeed placed under very trying circumstances; and, shortly after this period, it was even deemed necessary to authorize M. Delauney, Superintendent of the Menagerie, to kill the least

valuable of them, in order to provide food for the remainder. Hen Pen herself was never in a greater scrape.

The face of things, however, speedily changed. The events of November, 1799, by displacing and concentrating power,established a new order of things, whose chief by degrees rendered himself absolute, and by his astonishing achievements cast a dazzling lustre on the nation, and suddenly created great resources. The extraordinary man who was placed at the head of affairs felt that his power could not be secured by victory alone, and that, having made himself formidable abroad, it was necessary to gain admiration at home by favouring the progress of knowledge, by encouraging the arts and sciences, and by erecting monuments which should contribute to the glory and prosperity of the "great nation.”

But, the proceedings of Buonaparte in the bird and beetle line being less generally known than his floating at Tilsit, or his sinking at Waterloo, their narration will afford materials for another article, which, however, must be postponed till next month. We shall then bring down the history of this magnificent establishment to the present times, and conclude by a description of its existing state.

I Do not care a farthing about any man, woman, or child, in the world. You think that I am joking, Jemmy; but you are mistaken. What! you look at me again with those honest eyes of yours staring with wonder, and making a demi-pathetic, demi-angry appeal for an exception in your favour. Well, Jemmy, I do care about you, my honest fellow, so uncork the other bottle.

Did you ever see me out of humour in your life for the tenth part of a second?-Never, so help me, God!-Did you ever hear me speak ill of another? I might, perhaps, have cracked a joke -indeed, I have cracked a good many such in my time-at a man's expense behind his back; but never have I said anything which I would not say to his face, or what I would not take from him with treble hardness of recoil, if it so pleased him to return it; but real bona fide evil-speaking was never uttered by me. I never quar

relled with any one. You are going to put me in mind of my duel with Captain Maxwell. I acknowledge I fought it, and fired three shots. What then? Could I avoid it? I was no more angry with him, when I sent the message, than I was at the moment of my birth. Duelling is an absurd custom of the country, which I must comply with when occasion requires. The occasion had turned up, and I fought of course. Never was I happier than when I felt the blood trickling over my shoulders-for the wise laws of honour were satisfied, and I was rid of the cursed trouble. I was sick of the puppyism of punctilio, and the booby legislation of the seconds, and was glad to escape from it by a scratch. I made it up with Maxwell, who was an honest, though a hot-headed and obstinate man-and you know I was executor to his will. Indeed, he dined with me the very day-week after the duel. Yet, spite of this equanimity,

I repeat it, that I do not care for any human being on earth, (the present company always excepted,) more than I care for one of those filberts which you are cracking with such laudable assiduity.

Yes it is true-I have borne myself towards my family unexceptionably, as the world has it. I married off my sisters, sent my brothers to the colleges, and did what was fair for my mother. But I shall not be hypocrite enough to pretend to high motives for so doing, My father's death left them entirely to me, and what could I do with them? Turn them out? That would be absurd, and just as absurd to retain them at home without treating them properly. They were my family. My own comforts would have been materially invaded by any other line of conduct. I therefore executed the filial and fraternal affections in a manner which will be a fine topic of panegyric for my obituary. God help the idiots who write such things! They to talk of motives, and feelings, and the impulses that sway the human heart! They, whose highest ambition it is to furnish provender, at so much a line, for magazine or newspaper. Yet from them shall I receive the tribute of a tear. The world shall be informed in due time, and I care not how soon, that "DIED at his house, &c. &c. a gentleman, exemplary in every relation of life, whether we consider him as a son, a brother, a friend, or a citizen. His heart," and so on to the end of the fiddle faddle. The winding up of my family affairs, you know, is, that I have got rid of them all; that I pay the good people a visit once a-month, and ask them to a humdrum dinner on my birth-day, which you are perhaps aware occurs but once a-year. I am alone. I feel that I am alone.

My politics-what then? I am, externally at least, a Tory, à toute outrance, because my father and my grandfather (and I cannot trace my genealogy any higher) were so before me. Besides, I think every gentleman should be a Tory; there is an easiness, a suavity of mind, engendered by Toryism, which it is vain for you to expect from fretful Whiggery, or bawling Radicalism, and such should be a strong distinctive feature in every gentleman's character. And I admit, that, in my youth, I did many queer things, and said many violent and

nonsensical matters. But that fervour is gone. I am still outside the same; but inside how different! I laugh to scorn the nonsense I hear vented about me in the clubs which I frequent. The zeal about nothings, the bustle about stuff, the fears and the precautions against fancied dangers, the indignation against writings which no decent man thinks of reading, or against speeches which are but the essence of stupidity; in short, the whole tempest in a tea-pot appears to me to be ineffably ludicrous. I join now and then, nay very often, in these discussions; why should not I? Am I not possessed of the undoubted liberties of a Briton, invested with the full privilege of talking nonsense? And, if any of my associates laugh inside at me, why, I think them quite right.

But I have dirtied my fingers with ink, you say, and daubed other people's faces with them. I admit it. My pen has been guilty of various political jeux d'esprit, but let me whisper it, Jemmy, on both sides. Don't start, it is not worth while. My Tory quizzes I am suspected of; suspected I say, for I am not such a goose as to let them be any more than mere matters of suspicion; but of quizzes against Tories I am no more thought guilty than I am of petty larceny. Yet such is the case. I write with no ill feeling; public men or people who thrust themselves before the public in any way, I just look on as phantoms of the imagination, as things to throw off common-places about. You know how I assassinated Jack

***, in the song which you transcribed for me; how it spread in thousands, to his great annoyance. Well, on Wednesday last, he and I supped tete-a-tete, and a jocular fellow he is. It was an accidental rencounter-he was sulky at first, but I laughed and sung him into good humour. When the second bottle had loosened his tongue, he looked at me most sympathetically, and said, May I ask you a

question ?-A thousand, I replied, provided you do not expect me to answer them.-Ah, he cried, it was a shame for you to abuse me the way you did, and all for nothing; but, hang it, let bygones be bygones-You are too pleasant a fellow to quarrel with. I told him he appeared to be under a mistake-He shook his head-emp