t are the least
instructive--

_Sir Thomas More_.--To any but botanists--but for them alone they are
written. Do not depreciate any pursuit which leads men to contemplate
the works of their Creator! The Linnean traveller who, when you look
over the pages of his journal, seems to you a mere botanist, has in his
pursuit, as you have in yours, an object that occupies his time, and
fills his mind, and satisfies his heart. It is as innocent as yours, and
as disinterested--perhaps more so, because it is not so ambitious. Nor
is the pleasure which he partakes in investigating the structure of a
plant less pure, or less worthy, than what you derive from perusing the
noblest productions of human genius. You look at me as if you thought
this reprehension were undeserved!

_Montesinos_.--The eye, then, Sir Thomas, is proditorious, and I will not
gainsay its honest testimony: yet would I rather endeavour to profit by
the reprehension than seek to show that it was uncalled for. If I know
myself I am never prone to undervalue either the advantages or
acquirements which I do not possess. That knowledge is said to be of all
others the most difficult; whether it be the most useful the Greeks
themselves differ, for if one of their wise men left the words [Greek
text] as his maxim to posterity, a poet, who perhaps may have been not
less deserving of the title, has controverted it, and told us that for
the uses of the world it is more advantageous for us to understand the
character of others than to know ourselves.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Here lies the truth; he who best understands himself
is least likely to be deceived in others; you judge of others by
yourselves, and therefore measure them by an erroneous standard whenever
your autometry is false. This is one reason why the empty critic is
usually contumelious and flippant, the competent one as generally
equitable and humane.

_Montesinos_.--This justice I would render to the Linnean school, that it
produced our first devoted travellers; the race to which they succeeded
employed themselves chiefly in visiting museums and cataloguing pictures,
and now and then copying inscriptions; even in their books notices are
found for which they who follow them may be thankful; and facts are
sometimes, as if by accident, preserved, for useful application. They
went abroad to accomplish or to amuse themselves--to improve their time,
or to get rid of it; the botanists travelled for the sake