and was persuaded to take a
trip across to that country. He visited Oxford and London, and was
received by scientific men as a conquering hero. He saw Garrick act and
heard George Frederick Handel, where the crowd was so great that a
notice was posted requesting gentlemen to come without swords and ladies
without hoops. Handel composed an aria in his honor.

Returning to Leyden, Linnaeus was urged by the municipality to remain and
rearrange the public flower-gardens and catalog the rare plants at the
University. This took a year, in which three more books were issued
under his skilful care.

He now started for home in earnest, by way of Paris, with what a
contemporary calls "a trunkful of medals."

Paris, too, had honors and employment for the great botanist, but he
escaped and at last reached Fahlun. He had been gone nearly four years,
and during the interval had established his place in the scientific
world as the first botanist of the time.

"It was love that sent me out of Sweden, and but for love I would never
have returned," he wrote.

Linnaeus and Sara Elizabeth were married June Twenty-six, Seventeen
Hundred Thirty-nine.

Now the unexpected happened: Upsala petitioned Linnaeus to return, and
the man who headed the petition was the one who had driven him away and
who came near being killed for his pains. Linnaeus and his wife went to
Upsala, rich, honored, beloved.

Linnaeus shifted the scientific center of gravity of all Europe to a
town, practically to them obscure, a thing they themselves scarcely
realized.

Henceforth, the life of Linnaeus flowed forward like a great and mighty
river--everything made way for him. He was invited by the King of Spain
to come to that country and found a School of Science, and so lavish
were the promises that they surely would have turned the head of a
lesser man. Universities in many civilized countries honored themselves
by giving him degrees.

In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-one, the King of Sweden issued a patent of
nobility in his honor, and thereafter he was Carl von Linne. In England
he was known as Sir Charles Linn.

Sainte-Beuve, the eminent French critic, says that the world has
produced only about half a dozen men who deserve to be placed in the
first class. The elements that make up this super-superior man are high
intellect, which abandons itself to the purpose in hand, careless of
form and precedent; indifference to obstacles and opposition; and a
joyous, s