Saunders-Linnaeus-Lomonosoff-Ben Jonson-Ramus. 31

ing-House at Whitehall, and many other well-known edifices, was a cloth-worker; and he himself was also destined originally for a mecha

nical employment. Sir EDMUND SAUNDERS, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in the reign of Charles II., was in early life an errandboy at the inns of Court, and gradually acquired the elements of his knowledge of the law by being employed to copy precedents. LINNÆUS, the founder of modern Botany, although the son of a Swedish clergyman, and himself originally intended for holy orders, was, from his neglect of his theological studies, about to be taken from school and apprenticed to a shoemaker, when he was rescued from his fate by accidentally meeting one day a physician named Rothman, who, having entered into conversation with him, was so much struck with his intelligence, that he sent him to the university. The father of MICHAEL LOMONOSOFF, one of the most celebrated Russian poets of the last century, who eventually attained the highest literary dignities in his own country, was only a simple fishermen. Young Lomonosoff had great difficulty in acquiring as much education as enabled him to read and write; and it was only by running away from his father's house, and taking refuge in a monastery at Moscow, that he found means to obtain an acquaintance with the higher branches of literature. The famous BEN JONSON worked for some time as a bricklayer or mason; "and let not them blush," says Fuller, speaking of this circumstance in his 'English Worthies,' with his usual amusing, but often also expressive, quaintness, "let not them blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket."

PETER RAMUS (or, in the original French form of the name, Pierre

de la Ramée), one of the most intrepid thinkers of the sixteenth century, and especially famous in the history of philosophy for the novelty and audacity of his logical speculations, began his life, which was afterwards so distinguished, in the humble capacity of a shepherd boy, and was only at last, after a succession of efforts and disappointments, enabled to become a student at the College of Navarre, in the University of Paris, by hiring himself at the same time as a valet. When he had spent his day, one of his biographers tells us, in attendance on his master, following somewhat the example of the old Greek philosopher Cleanthes, he made such good use of his oil and his lamp in the night that he very soon acquired as much of the light of learning as procured him his degree of Master of Arts. "I confess," he says himself in one of his tracts, "that I have been tossed all my life on waves of sorrow. Scarcely was I out of the cradle when I had to begin the struggle, assailed at once by two contending calamities" (he means, apparently, poverty and exile, or possibly, it may be, ill-health); "when I was become a young man, with fortune.cross and fighting against me in every way, I resorted to Paris to obtain for myself a liberal education, and was twice compelled to leave by the violence of the time, twice returned when the tempest somewhat abated, and ever felt the love of learning burn the stronger within me the greater the opposition with which it had to contend." At last he fought his way so successfully through all obstacles that in the year 1551, while he was still in early manhood (for he was born in 1515), he was, by the favour of the Cardinal de Lorraine, appointed Professor of Eloquence and Philosophy in the College de France, a new royal chair established for his behoof. In a remarkable address which he delivered on entering upon this office, before a throng, it is said, of some two thousand eager listeners, he thus manfully referred to his early difficulties:-"It has been cast in my teeth that my father was a charcoalvendor. True it is, that my grandfather-of one of the first families about Liège-was compelled to take refuge in the Vermandois, when Charles of Burgundy committed his native city to the flames, and that poverty drove him to deal in charcoal, and my father to stand behind the plough. I myself was in yet harder straits than either. And hence it is that some ill-conditioned Dives, whose father and fatherland nobody has ever heard of, has cast censure on the poverty of my highborn ancestry. To this I reply, that I am a Christian, and so have never considered poverty a reproach. . . . Through stress of fortune, I passed many years of my life in lowly servitude. Nevertheless, my mind was ever free, was never despondent or cast down. Therefore, O Lord God Almighty, who out of stones couldest raise up children unto Abraham, raise up, in this charcoal-vendor's grandson, this labourer's son, not great wealth or fortune for these I need but little to get me the tools of my craft, pen, ink, and paper-but rather vouchsafe to him, unto his life's

Longomontanus-Maddox-Milner-Hunter.

33 end, a right mind, and a diligent industry which shall never wax faint."

The celebrated Danish astronomer, LONGOMONTANUS, was the son of a labourer, and, while attending the academical lectures at Wyburg through the day, was obliged to work for his support during a part of the night. The elder DAVID PAREUS, the eminent German Protestant divine, who was afterwards Professor of Theology at Heidelberg, was placed in his youth as an apprentice, first with an apothecary, and then with a shoemaker. HANS (or John) SACHS, the most famous of the old German Meistersingers, or Burgher poets, of the sixteenth century, was the son of a tailor, and served an apprenticeship himself, first to a shoemaker, and afterwards to a weaver, at which last trade, indeed, he continued to work during the rest of his life. JOHN FOLCZ, another old German poet, was a barber. LUCAS CORNELISZ, a Dutch painter of the sixteenth century, who visited England during the reign of Henry VIII., and was patronised by that monarch, was obliged, while in his own country, in order to support his large family, to betake himself to the profession of a cook. Dr. Isaac MADDOX, who, in the reign of George II., became bishop, first of St. Asaph, and then of Worcester, and who is well known by his work in defence of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, lost both his parents, who belonged to a very humble rank of life, at an early age, and was in the very first instance placed by his friends with a pastrycook. The late Dr. ISAAC MILNER, Dean of Carlisle, and President of Queens' College, and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, at Cambridge, who held a distinguished place among the scientific men of his day, was bred a woollen-weaver; as was also his younger brother JOSEPH, well known for his "History of the Church." So was the late Dr. JOSEPH WHITE, Professor of Arabic at Oxford. CASSERIO, a well-known Italian anatomist, was initiated in the elements of medical science by a surgeon of Padua, with whom he had lived originally as a domestic servant. JOHN CHRISTIAN THEDEN, who rose to be chief surgeon to the Prussian army under Frederick II., had in his youth been apprenticed to a tailor.

The celebrated JOHN HUNTER, one of the greatest anatomists that ever lived, scarcely received any education whatever until he was twenty years old. He was born in the year 1728, in Lanarkshire; and being the youngest of a family of ten, and the child of his father's old age, was brought up with much foolish indulgence. When he was only ten years old his father died; and under the charge of his mother it is probable that he was left to act as he chose, with still less restraint than before. Such was his aversion at this time to anything like regular application, that it was with no small difficulty, we are told, he had been taught even the elements of reading and writing; while an attempt that was made to give him some knowledge of Latin-according to the

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