[106] Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.

[107] This poem (The Sugar Cane) when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when after much blank-verse pomp the poet began a paragraph thus.—­

    “Now, Muse, let’s sing of rats.”

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company who slyly overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice and had been altered to rats as more dignified.—­Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

[108] Hazlitt has a pleasant essay on a garden Sun-dial, from which I take the following passage:—­

Horas non numero nisi serenas—­is the motto of a sun dial near Venice.  There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled.  Of all conceits it is surely the most classical.  “I count only the hours that are serene.”  What a bland and care-dispelling feeling!  How the shadows seem to fade on the dial plate as the sky looms, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion!  What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind—­to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten!  How different from the common art of self tormenting!  For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable, but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself, and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction.

[109] These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants, they will be found at length on the lower column.

[110] Hampton Court was laid out by Cardinal Wolsey.  The labyrinth, one of the best which remains in England, occupies only a quarter of an acre, and contains nearly a mile of winding walks.  There is an adjacent stand, on which the gardener places himself, to extricate the adventuring stranger by his directions.  Switzer condemns this plan for having only four stops and gives a plan for one with twenty.—­Loudon.

[111] The lower part of Bengal, not far from Calcutta, is here described

[112] Sir William Jones states that the Brahmins believe that the blue champac flowers only in Paradise, it being yellow every where else.

[113] The wild dog of Bengal

[114] The elephant.