Linnæus was not without decided advantages in those opportunities which foster intellect, promote emulation, and give impulse to genius. Hannah More has remarked that the best kind of education is drawn from the conversation of well-informed parents. It has been stated that the Botanist enjoyed this privilege in an eminent degree. His father took unusual pains to mature his mind, and though subjected to occasional disappointments, he met with friends even in Professors, who had sagacity to discern the sphere which he was one day to occupy. He found his way to the University of Lund, and subsequently to the one at Upsal, where lectures were delivered on his favorite science, and botanical gardens were open to his inspection. We are at a loss to imagine in what circumstances more delightful a scholar could have been placed, than those in which Linnæus was placed when he took up his abode at Hartecamp, the villa of his friend Cliffort, near Haerlem. Here he found books of science, and works of taste, exotic shrubs mingled with indigenous plants, museums filled with gems from the mines of Golconda, and cabinets full of shells culled from the grottos of the sea, and from the beaches of distant oceans. But truth constrains us to place the Ornithologist in the back ground of this picture. We find him struggling with penury from the beginning, and even traversing the moors of Scotland in search of a precarious subsistence. No university opened to him its ancient gates and cloistered cells. No man of wealth placed aviaries under his superintendence, and decoyed for his use speckled birds into the captivity of some sylvan Paradise. After his removal to this country he met with friends, but like himself, they were for the most part penniless. Among them, Joseph Dennie is worthy of mention--a man prompt to encourage every good design. He was at that time editor of the Port Folio, and through the medium of that work he served the cause of Ornithology. Dennie was the pioneer of literature in this country, and he is to be measured by the quality rather than the quantity of his works. He wrote no brilliant poems or ingenious tales, no dissertations in which philosophy led the way, and no historical works in which imposing events were arranged for the eye of posterity; but his Lay Preacher will always bear witness to the graceful structure of his mind.