urselves, which being not only our
hope, but an evidence in noble believers; 'tis all one to lie in St.
Innocent's church-yard or the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything in
the ecstacy of being ever, as content with six foot as the moles of
Adrianus."

Happy philosophy, that could permit him calmly to contemplate the
vicissitudes to which his bones might be subjected, even to the
legitimate possibility of the sanctuary chosen for their resting-place
being actually invaded by the blows of the workmen's pickaxe, as
veritably did occur some few years since, when the curious of the present
generation were thus accidentally afforded an opportunity of cultivating
a personal acquaintance with the anatomical outlines and phrenological
developments of one whose intellectual offspring had been canonized, and
enshrined among the household gods of the learned and the great for more
than a century.

The very slight sketches of eminent characters that are suitable for so
light and general a book as this, may perhaps be legitimately introduced
in the course of a tour among the churches, their _parochial headships_
affording the best facilities for arrangement; but it seems almost
sacrilege to hash up into abridgements or synopses, biographies so
fraught with national and European interest, as are many of those whose
birth-place has been the Old City of Norwich, yet more is impossible
within the compass of the _Rambler's_ pen; and to adopt the alternative
of omitting all mention of such names, would be to blot out some of the
brightest pages from the annals of its history.

Among them, and perhaps the highest upon the pinnacle of fame, is that of
Sir James Edward Smith, the Linnaeus of our country, the concentration of
whose "life and Correspondence" into two bulky volumes, evinces wondrous
powers of discriminating selection, and condensation, in the biographer
who has undertaken the important and onerous task. What, then, can be
effected in the hasty notices of a mere rambler's gleanings? Little
more, if so much, as a bare outline of the leading features in the life
of this brilliant ornament of our city and country, but enough, we trust,
to lead any who have not already acquired a more intimate knowledge of
his personal history, to feel earnest to repair the omission. He was a
native of the parish of St. Peter's Mancroft; and of his education, it is
worthy of note, that he never left the parental roof to enter either a
public