The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel behind the high altar.  The fresco paintings present to us the most eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa’s life.  Here his clay moulders, with that of his three consorts.  Yonder, a work in marble, by Sargel, solicits our attention:  it adorns the burial-chapel of the De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests Linnaeus.  In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by amici and discipuli:  a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift.  The projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and disciples, and King Gustavus answered:  “And am not I also one of Linnaeus’s disciples?”

The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden, under splendid trees.  There stands his bust; but the remembrance of himself, his home, his own little garden—­where is it most vivid?  Lead us thither.

On yonder side of Fyri’s rivulet, where the street forms a declivity, where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus’s garden.  We stand within it.  How solitary! how overgrown!  Tall nettles shoot up between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges.  No water-plants appear more in that little, dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped, put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener’s shears.

It was between these hedges that Linnaeus at times saw his own double—­that optical illusion which presents the express image of a second self—­from the hat to the boots.

Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as it were, a part and parcel of him:  the whole, as well as a part, has mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and become linked with it and the whole world.

We enter the orangeries:  they are now transformed into assembly-rooms; the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a sort of herbarium.  They are hung round with the portraits of learned Swedes—­herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge.  Unknown faces—­and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names—­meet us here.

One portrait amongst the many attracts our attention:  it looks singular; it is the half-length figure of an old man in a shirt, lying in his bed.  It is that of the learned theologian, Oedmann, who after he had been compelled to keep his bed by a fever, found himself so comfortable in it, that he continued to lie there during the remainder of his long life, and was not to be induced to get up.  Even when the next house was burning, they were obliged to carry him out in his bed into the street.  Death and cold were his two bugbears.  The cold would kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came