ged devotion to literature out of its purest love for itself alone.
He made his own universal curiosity the source of knowledge to other men.
Considering the studious as forming but one great family wherever they
were, for PEIRESC the national repositories of knowledge in Europe formed
but one collection for the world. This man of letters had possessed
himself of their contents, that he might have manuscripts collated,
unedited pieces explored, extracts supplied, and even draughtsmen employed
in remote parts of the world, to furnish views and plans, and to copy
antiquities for the student, who in some distant retirement often
discovered that the literary treasures of the world were unfailingly
opened to him by the secret devotion of this man of letters.

Carrying on the same grandeur in his views, his universal mind busied
itself in every part of the habitable globe. He kept up a noble traffic
with all travellers, supplying them with philosophical instruments and
recent inventions, by which he facilitated their discoveries, and secured
their reception even in barbarous realms. In return he claimed, at his own
cost, for he was "born rather to give than to receive," says Gassendi,
fresh importations of Oriental literature, curious antiquities, or botanic
rarities; and it was the curiosity of PEIRESC which first embellished his
own garden, and thence the gardens of Europe, with a rich variety of
exotic flowers and fruits.[A] Whenever presented with a medal, a vase, or
a manuscript, he never slept over the gift till he had discovered what the
donor delighted in; and a book, a picture, a plant, when money could not
be offered, fed their mutual passion, and sustained the general cause of
science. The correspondence of PEIRESC branched out to the farthest bounds
of Ethiopia, connected both Americas, and had touched the newly-discovered
extremities of the universe, when this intrepid mind closed in a premature
death.

[Footnote A: On this subject see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p.
151; and for some further account of Peiresc and his labours, vol. iii. p.
409, of the same work.--ED.]

I have drawn this imperfect view of PEIRESC'S character, that men of
letters may be reminded of the capacities they possess. In the character
of PEIRESC, however, there still remains another peculiar feature. His
fortune was not great; and when he sometimes endured the reproach of those
whose sordidness was startled at his prodigality of