Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/328

his "Deliciæ Naturæ" he classifies the plants by comparing their families to a great commonwealth, saying of the grass:

The grass, in its simple dräkt [costume] makes up here the peasant class; it is the most numerous and contributes the most, it takes care of itself the best, although it is daily tramped upon and vexed.

To one with such a true, sympathetic and enthusiastic love for nature, life must needs be full of meaning. There is a saying in Swedish, "Som man ropar i skogen, får man svar" (As one calls into the woods so is he answered). Linné called into the woods with a voice of love, and in like tones all nature answered. He took delight in coming upon the creeping twin-flower trailing through the pinewoods, in listening to the little chaffinch (bofink) with a great butterfly in his mouth calling home his children to dinner. He marveled at the endurance of the Lapps in going over mountains and with a human sympathy entered into their fresh, free life. He enjoyed watching the young men and women of Skåne dance about the midsumer maypole. For him everything is worth observing and noting. With so many things to see, to think about and to love, his life is one of sunshine, and he is full of thankfulness for having been permitted to know and enjoy so much. Truly to such a human heart, as to Wordsworth,

the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Linné is not like the swine which "become fat on acorns, but not once look up at the tree from which the fruit fell, much less think upon him who established the tree so splendidly." He says of himself:

I sought after God's footsteps over nature's plain and perceived in every one, even in those I could scarcely discern, an unending wisdom and power, an impenetrable completeness.

And again after declaring that God's wisdom is shown in the smallest creature as well as in the elephant and is as worthy of wonder, he repeats a favorite phrase of his:

Great are the works of the Lord, and the one who takes heed of them he has joy therein (Store äro Herrans verk, och den som uppå dem aktar, han hafver lust deraf).

To appreciate fully Linné's love for nature we must remember that he began life early in the eighteenth century, in the very midst of the classical age of European life and letters. It was an age in which emphasis was placed upon the conventional, the formal, an age in which feeling and enthusiasm were restrained, an age of the court and the city, rather than of the country and nature. In the romantic movement, which meant a breaking away from artificial classicism, one of the most important features was the "return to nature." In the beginning of