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 with their
essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before
he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there
was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a
writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round
about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the
convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was a deaf
and dumb laughter.

She sat still in a corner by the window, wrapped up in herself, and
staring before her, as if she were a figure that had flown out of the
frame around the dark, mouldy canvas, which had once shown a picture
on the wall.

Here, in the room, in this impure atmosphere, the old man lived
happily, and reached his seventieth year, occupied with the
translation of travels in Africa. This tainted atmosphere, in which he
lay, became, to his conceit, the dromedary's high back, which lifted
him aloft in the burning sun; the long, hanging-down cobwebs were the
palm-trees' waving banners, and the caravan went over rivers to the
wild bushmen. Old Oedma