Linnæus and Wilson made but small attainments in any other branch than the department in which each of them became eminent. The first was conspicuous in his medical profession, but this was the result of adventitious circumstances. He gained some acquaintance with Mineralogy, and even explored the province of Dalecarlia as a kind of Peripatetic Lecturer--but this branch belongs to Natural Science. He was sent in youth to an academy, with a view to prepare for the sacred office; but his habits, though marked by innocence, unfitted him for its duties. He appears to have been deficient in what Phrenologists call the organ of language, and especially in the acquisition of the modern tongues; but whilst others were becoming familiar with words, he was ruminating by Lake Helga, and stripping Lake Wetter of its plants, that the tribes of the North might learn to speak in flowers, and thereby resemble in traits of sentiment and imagination the caravans of the East. The attainments of the Ornithologist were from his circumstances necessarily limited. Confusion is generally consequent on education which has not discipline for its basis. Before Wilson left Scotland he attempted poetry, and some of his productions were attributed to Burns; but this kind of mistake is frequently made by the partiality of friends. {75} The poetical productions of the Ornithologist are not entitled to much consideration; at least his temperament in this respect was more vividly displayed in action than in verbal expression. Both possessed remarkable powers of analysis, and in each the elements of taste were mingled in such a way as to turn the scale in favor of science rather than of imagination. The genius of both moved in a limited but perfect circle. That filled by the Botanist was stocked with herbs and the foliage of the Zones, surmounted by the golden flowers of the Line--and all held together by a diamond chain, whilst the choice assemblage was enlivened by the hum of the insect tribes. The other filled by the Ornithologist, was supplied from the air, and he crowded within its circumference birds of emerald and ruby grain, in the centre of which the Eagle was poised, whilst his ear was regaled by the song chanted at intervals from the curling vines of the Tropics, or the volume of melody from the woodlands of his adopted country. Each of them eventually insulated his mind to his vocation, and this is better than dispersing mental power over various pursuits. They thus reduced their genius to something of an integral kind, without the appendage of fractional parts.