Syria, is introduced as a divine revelation, into the Koran. The story of the Seven Sleepers has been adopted, and adorned, by the nations, from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion; and some vestiges of a similar tradition have been discovered in the remote extremities of Scandinavia. JOHN RAY, THE NATURALIST. Ray was the son of a blacksmith, at Black Notley, in Essex, where he was born in 1628. He received his education at Braintree school, at Catharine Hall, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. His intense studies, requiring country air and exercise, occasioned his predilection for botany; his first rambles in search of plants were confined in extent, but subsequently diverged throughout England and Wales; and at length passing the channel he visited many parts of Europe. His books of instruction were the works of Johnson and Parkinson, and the Phytologia Britannica. His friend and companion, Francis Willoughby,[50] was a gentleman as amiable as scientific, their souls seeming to be blended together. Ray having been ordained, did not chuse to accept of the emoluments of the church, with which he did not entirely unite; but just before his death, when it was too late to gain, he became reconciled to it. Mr. Willoughby, who died in 1672, left him an annuity of sixty pounds, but it does not appear what other property he possessed, except his fellowship of Trinity. Though the generations which have followed him have produced a Linnæus, a Buffon, and a Pennant, yet Ray’s fame is too well established ever to be supplanted. He was a wise, a learned, as well as a pious and modest man, and ever ready to impart that knowledge which he had taken so much pains to acquire. He died in 1705 with a devout humility that had ever distinguished him, wishing that he had spent much more of his life in the immediate service of his Creator. There was no task too arduous for Ray; if Lister, a contemporary naturalist, would have gone to the bottom of the ocean for a shell, Ray would have climbed to the extreme point of the Alps for a new plant. In the church-yard of Black Notley, his native place, there is a long and elegant inscription to the memory of this great man, and in the library of Trinity College, there is a fine marble bust of him, in company with Bacon and other splendid ornaments of that magnificent foundation. Footnote 50: