of the eight heads, but by the plan just given the history of every creature was examined, and before Gesner died he had pub-| lished four of the six folios which were to bring together into one place all that had been said worthy of recollection about every known animal, whether considered as an independent creature, or in any one of its relations to society. These four volumes contain the complete history, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, of birds, beasts, and fishes.

Of course there were small critics in the days of Gesner, who were quite ready to dance about him when his book was out, to blow their little trumpets, or to ply their little stings, like gnats that flit about the head of a strong man at labor in the fields, and patronize him, or pooh-pooh his ploughing. So long as the wind whistles, little critics shall be heard to sing. While learned men were honestly admiring the immense toil which had perfected Gesner's work, and the greatest naturalists of his day were thanking him for the important service he had done to them and to their successors by bringing all the literature of a wide subject, at the cost of so much labor to himself, within their easy reach, the lesser critics, looking at the History of Animals from their own point of view, reviewed it with their tongues as they would now review it with their pens. It was easy enough to call its treatises centos, and although Gesner was not reproached by any good scholar for the inelegance of his Latin, it was not difficult to accuse the style of a work that was made up largely of extracts conscientiously translated from authors of every civilized time and country. It was easy to make mean use of Gesner's modest claim to be considered rather a grammarian than a philosopher, or to detect in woodcuts inaccuracies which were always noted and corrected in type by Gesner himself, on the same page if possible, or if not there, in a succeeding sheet. Dunces were able to point out the sources from which any portion of his knowledge had been drawn, because he never failed to acknowledge in his books, from the greatest to the least, with ample generosity, every literary obligation.

I ought not to cease speaking of this massive work without dedicating a few words to the memory of Christopher Froschover, publisher of Zurich, who with his own pocket sustained the whole cost and risk of publication. The four folios of the Historia Animalium, with the additional volumes of figures, contain a mass of typography and a

multitude of woodcuts from drawings sketched by nature, that would be regarded as the basis of a most serious enterprise by the wealthiest of publishers in the most populous metropolis in our own day. Christopher Froschover of Zurich did not flinch. His emblem punning on his name of Frog-over-a boy over a frog and frogs over a palm-tree-is stamped upon the title page of every book published by Gesner while at Zurich. When Gesner was dead, and old Christopher, his publisher, was dead, there was a young Christopher, who succeeded to the business, and mourned his father's loss through his trade emblem, by removing the old boy from the frog's back, and retaining the frog without a rider, in the foreground, while in the background there was the usual colony upon the palmtree.

It has been said that Gesner's study of Nature was confined to tangible things, animals, metals, plants. He devoted himself chiefly to the publication of a history of animals, for reasons that have been already mentioned. On metals and gems he published a small book, compiled from an immense mass of materials; and, since he did not live in the vicinity of mines, he used great zeal in the questioning of strangers, and in benefiting by the observation of his correspondents who had better opportunities of practical research. The study of plants, however, remained always his favorite pursuit. Among the mountains about Lucerne, on the banks of the Rhine, at Basle, in France, in sundry parts of Italy, and about Venice, when he dwelt a month there studying fishes, in yearly trips among the Swiss Alps, he had always been an unwearied plant collector. He had read all that was written upon botany-had at his tongue's end all the information that was to be found in Dioscorides, Theophrastus, and Pliny among the ancients, or in Ruellius, Fuchs, Tragus, and other moderns. Of every plant that he found for the first time he made a careful drawing, and caused it, if possible, to grow in his own little garden--which became a true botanic garden-in the town of Zurich; or if it would not thrive there, he preserved a specimen of it carefully dried. He investigated constantly the properties of plants, studied their qualities and temperament by eating portions of them to test persona ly their effect upon the system, or by sitting down to his study with their stems, leaves and flowers bound to his person, that he might observe any effect they could produce upon the skin. He sought aid from the

custom among the Swiss-a custom wholesome for the time-to dread the doctor. When the doctor might, perhaps, order powder of rubies, to the despair of his poor patient, when patients suffering under the thirst of fever were forbidden to taste any liquid, and when doctors, with the best intentions, certainly killed more patients than they cured, the Swiss showed their good motherwit by keeping physic from their doors as long as possible. The practice, therefore, of Conrad Gesner, as the chief physician of Zurich, was insignificant, interfering not at all with his vocation as professor of philoso

Such cases, however, as he had, he treated with peculiar discretion; among his works there is a sanitary book, De Sanitate Tuenda, in which, as in his History of Animals, he showed a due sense of the importance of a more exact study of Hygiène, and of a branch of it, I may observe, little regarded in this country-cookery.

knowledge of other men, not only in books, | very profitable; for it was at that time the but in the world around him; questioning not the learned only, but conversing with the common people; learning from old crones and from rustics common names of plants, and popular traditions of their virtues; rejecting nothing scornfully, but examining all that he heard, and endeavoring to trace even the muddy waters of superstition to their wholesome source. The plants that he collected he compared with the descriptions found in ancient authors, and with each plant before him he collated the accounts of Pliny, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides, discovering blunders of compilation made by Pliny, and correcting in each author many faulty passages.phy, and very little with his private studies. His ardent interest in botany being well known among all learned men, and the courteous scholar being everywhere respected by his fellow-laborers, from Italy, France, Germany, and England, there were arriving constantly at Gesner's house in Zurich, seeds and plants, both dry and fresh, as new material for study. The produce of all this zeal, and of the out-door industry of thirty years, was a collection of more than five hundred plants undescribed by the ancients. He was arranging his acquired knowledge for the purpose of publishing the results of what had been, above all others, his labor of love since childhood up to the last day of his life. Many figures were already cut in wood that were to have been used on the pages of the book that Gesner did not live to write. The preparation of these figures had gone on under the close superintendence of the naturalist, whose face was often bent over his artist's shoulder, watchful to prevent the play of fancy that might introduce pictorial effect at the expense of truth. He would not leave to the discretion of the artist so much as a fibre in the venation of his leaves, or a line upon the petal of a flower, but enforced by constant scrutiny and exhortation scrupulous fidelity to Nature.

So far the story of the life of Conrad Gesner presents to our imaginations the picture of a scholar whose intense devotion to his studies might excuse in him some little neglect of what are now and then called the distractions that belong to daily life. Gesner, however, was not more a scholar than a gentleman. In the town and in the household he performed every duty with a genial promptitude. In Zurich he was honored by all people, not as the learned man who had won European fame and earned the title of the German Pliny, but as the kind, upright citizen. His practice as a physician was not

Gesner, a Swiss and a scholar, living in the days of the Reformation, examined carefully the records of the Christian faith; he studied zealously the ancient fathers, and read the Scriptures carefully. He had a great affection for the Book of Psalms, which he read commonly in Hebrew. He was not bigoted, but lived in friendly correspondence with men of all creeds and nations, always, however, bold and earnest in support of his own views of Christian truth. He reasoned with his friends among the Unitarian heretics in Poland. While at home he did not hold himself to be too learned or too busy to attend at church, not only on the sacred days, but twice a week also on working days, when the minister, Bullinger, to whose congregation he belonged, assembled those who would attend. If he knew beforehand that Bullinger was about on any day to give an exposition of some part of the Old Testament, Gesner would take his Hebrew Bible with him to the church, and follow the preacher in it with the intellect of a philosopher and the simplicity of those past days when, as a child, he loved the Scriptures as he heard them from the lips of the herb-loving pastor, Fricius. The same spirit of piety had induced Gesner to take especial care that in his History of Animals every allusion made to an animal in holy writ should be expounded to the best of his ability.

The scholar of Zurich was a Christian and a gentleman. He shrank from giving pain, was simple in his mind and manners, free

from ostentation, modest, rigidly truthful. I something that he had upon his premises. Never idle, he had no leisure to acquire a As Gesner's garden had grown into a very taste for luxury, nor was there perceptible well-supplied botanic garden, so his whole in his outward character a trace of lust. He house had become a museum, although one belonged to a strict school of reformers; his room in it had especially been dedicated speech was pure, and he abhorred either the under that name to the arrangement of his hearing or the reading of obscenity. He dried plants, his metals and fossils, his large reproved it when spoken in his presence; he collection of the stuffed bodies of strange issued Martial in a new edition, with all animals, and his pictures of natural objects. impure passages expunged. He lamented These treasures had accumulated rapidly by greatly that in his days men had reformed the donations of his learned visitors, and their opinions so much more completely than contributions sent to him from the warm their lives; and he held frequent consulta- friends that he had made in many corners of tions with grave theologians on the means the world. Gesner had little gold: his that might be taken to improve the discipline treasure was his knowledge; and he gave of the reformed church, and get better deeds that with unusual generosity. He was ready as well as better doctrines from the people. to explain to any people whatever they de sired to understand through him, and glad to give away his duplicates to those who could appreciate such gifts. If any rare secret came to his knowledge, if a profitable hint in medicine was suddenly discovered in the course of his wide circle of reading, he never attempted to retain it and employ it to his own exclusive gain. If it was professional, it was at once communicated to his brethren in the town-if literary, it was sent to any friend who could make best and promptest use of it. Thousands of men have had more genius than Conrad Gesner, but never one man, perhaps, has had more completely the true noble spirit of a man of letters.

The scholar, Conrad Gesner, lived in the exercise of never-failing courtesies towards all who had relations with him. He cultivated the friendship of the good and learned, and he grudged no labor to his friends. He assisted in the revision of proof-sheets for them, suggesting from the vast stores of his knowledge any emendations or additions that seemed advantageous. He provided authorities, wrote prefaces, edited posthumous works; he helped young students by supplying them with Greek exemplars that they might earn credit by editing; he was indefatigable in his zeal to push on to success any hard-working struggler in whose merit he had faith. To the junior physicians of the town he was a guide, not a rival; he let slip no opportunity, when they met in consultation or in other ways he was able, by generous and well-timed words, to strengthen their good fame. He acknowledged every favor he received; his writings contain not one sentence of detraction, but a thousand sentences displaying cordial recognition of all merit that he found in his contempora

ries.

Who that was good and learned in those days was not the friend of Conrad Gesner? The scholar's doors were always hospitably open. He desired to compensate for his own inability to travel by hearing the discourse of men from all parts of the world. He did not count the time spent in society as lost, because he did not waste his social hours in trivial conversation; he talked that he might learn. When a man came to him from a foreign country, that man was for the time his book, and while he fulfilled all his duties as a host, he was continuing his studies. Rarely a day passed in which Gesner was not visited by some one desirous either to see the famous naturalist and scholar, or to study

In the year preceding the death of Gesner, plague increased in Zurich, and among those whom it removed was his old master, Bibliander; there died also in that year Gesner's bosom friend, Johann Fricius, who had been his companion of old time in France. Gesner dreamed one night that he was bitten by a serpent, and in the morning told his wife that he regarded the dream as a presage of his death. The serpent, he said, was the plague. From that time he considered, though he was not yet forty-nine years old, and in possession of his usual health, which never had been robust, that his course of life was drawing to a close. His letters to his friends from that time frequently dwelt upon this solemn presentiment, never with pain, though he believed that his most cherished work was to be left unfinished; he expressed no regret, no dread. It is in one of Gesner's letters, written during this last year of his life, a letter to Zuinger,-that a passage occurs in which we read how real had been the progress made by him in botany. Had he lived to write the work for which he had prepared himself

From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.

MONTENEGRO.

THE eastern shores of the Adriatic, and contiguous islands, have been less explored by tourists than any other portions of Europe; and Mr. Paton's wanderings come before the public with a promise of novelty very rare in these well-travelled times.* Although the promise, however, is redeemed, we cannot say that the result is quite so interesting as we expected. After descending the Illyrian Alps into Dalmatia (the main subject of the work), and getting somewhat accustomed to the difference of manners and costume, the continuous catalogue of little-known, or altogether unknown and unimportant names, becomes fatiguing. Nor is this made up for by any ideas of magnitude or wealth; for the whole country numbers only 400,000 inhabitants, giving 113 per square mile; and the uncultivated land (the greater proportion of which is incapable of cultivation) averages 80 per cent.

of the surface.

shall be able to supply what is wanted from those Russian authorities to whom we owe almost all that is known on the subject.

When the Turks became masters of Servia in the fourteenth century, the Montenegrines were the only nobles of the empire who preserved their Christian faith: the mountain, whose fastnesses enabled them to secure their independence, rising, "like Ararat, amid the overwhelming floods of Islamism." Eventually it sank into the see of an archbishop, and was conquered by the Turks under Soliman the Magnificent; which event made converts to the faith of the prophet even on the mountain itself. These renegades, however, were afterwards massacred almost to a man, by one of the archbishops, in whose family the spiritual power, as well as predominating temporal influence, became hereditary. In the midst of a Mohammedan country which it defied, yet upon which it could make no impression, and nomBut the comparative want of interest is inally depending upon Russia, from which it not chargeable upon Mr. Paton, who is an received no support, Montenegro now sunk excellent scenic artist. Numerous bits of back into still darker than feudal barbarism, painting throughout the volumes will bear a and its existence was almost forgotten in comparison with anything of the kind in re- | Europe. Then came the wars of Napoleon, cent travels; and whenever he has anything which brought the mountaineers from their to tell that is intelligible to the sympathies of fastnesses; and then the treaty of Vienna, his phlegmatic and exclusive countrymen, he which declared the Adriatic province at the tells it with effect. A trip he makes, for in- foot of the mountain a part of the Austrian stance, beyond the line he had prescribed for dominions, but left the mountain itself an himself, is full of interest, and, to most read-independent state, though acknowledging ers, of novelty. The scene is the mountain nominally, as before, the supremacy of Ruson which the extraordinary republic of Mon- sia. tenegro is perched, at one time an important fief of the Servian empire, with which it was, and is, completely identified in blood, language, and religion. To this part of the work we shall devote our exclusive attention; and although Mr. Paton was accidentally prevented from enjoying more than a glimpse of the Montenegrines and their country, we

*Highlands and Islands of the Adriatic, and the Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire. By A. A. Paton. 2 vols. Chapman and Hall. London. 1849.

So much for the benefit of those who were unacquainted with Montenegro. The mountain appears almost to overhang the Austrian town of Cattaro on the Adriatic. "At the extremity of the basin of Cattaro is situated the town, regularly fortified. A quay fronts the basin, and a plantation of poplars, rising with the masts of the vessels, under which the Bocchese, in their almost Turkish costume, prosecuted their business, produced a novelty of effect which one seldom sees on the beaten tracks of the tourist; and looking