This excellent son of good Bishop Swedberg received the best education that the times and his country could afford. In his twenty-second year, at the University of Upsal, he took his degree of Doctor in philosophy. The dissertation which he wrote for his degree was afterwards published. It consisted of a selection of sentences from Seneca, Publius Syrus Mimus, and other Latin writers, enriched by comments of his own, and notes illustrating the obscurities of the Latin text. This work was so highly thought of, as to occasion a poetic eulogy, written in Greek, to be inscribed to its author. Swedenborg dedicated this, his first literary production, to his father, in a prelude full of veneration and love. Its length alone prevents our gratifying the reader with the perusal of this beautiful tribute of filial affection. Among his many virtues, it should not be accounted the least, that Swedenborg was a loving, dutiful son. The same year he published, in a work of his father’s, a Latin version of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, which proved, in a high degree, his mastery of the Latin language. In 1710, was finished the strictly scholastic period of Swedenborg’s life. He had now reached manhood, and must live as a man among men. His youth manifests less precocity than solid and regular development of mind. The record of his life at this time, evidences a common-sense appreciation of life and its duties, an honest love of virtue, and a desire to be useful in his day and generation. The sequel will show that his day of life was not unworthy of its dawn. CHAPTER II. _Travels—Becomes Author—Is crossed in Love._ Having completed his university education, Swedenborg entered on his travels. In his journal, he thus briefly describes a four years’ absence from Sweden. “In the year 1710 I set out for Gottenburg, that I might be conveyed, by ship, thence to London. On the voyage, my life was in danger four times: first on some shoals, toward which we were driven by a storm, until we were within a quarter of a mile from the raging breakers, and we thought we should all perish. Afterwards we narrowly escaped some Danish pirates under French colors; and the next evening we were fired into from a British ship, which mistook us for the same pirates, but without much damage. Lastly, in London itself, I was exposed to a more serious danger. While we were entering the harbor, some of our countrymen came to us in a boat, and persuaded me to go with them into the city. Now it was known in London that an epidemic was raging in Sweden, and therefore all who arrived from Sweden were forbidden to leave their ships for six weeks, or forty days; so I, having transgressed this law, was very near being hanged, and was only freed under the condition that, if any one attempted the same thing again, he should not escape the gallows.