Notwithstanding his zeal to detect old errors, he seems not very easy to admit new positions; for he never mentions the motion of the earth but with contempt and ridicule, though the opinion which admits it was then growing popular, and was surely plausible even before it was confirmed by later observations.

The reputation of Browne encouraged some low writer to publish, under his name, a book called "Nature's Cabinet Unlocked," translated, according to Wood, from the Physics of Magirus; of which Browne took care to clear himself, by modestly advertising, that "if any man had been benefited by it, he was not so ambitious as to challenge the honor thereof, as having no hand in that work."

In 1658 the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occasion to write "Hydriotaphia, Urn-burial, or a Discourse of Sepulchral Urns," in which he treats with his usual learning on the funeral rites of the ancient nations, exhibits their various treatment of the dead, and examines the substances found in his Norfolcian urns. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. It is scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars he has amassed together in a treatise which seems to have been occasionally written, and for which, therefore, no materials could have been previously collected.

To his treatise on Urn-burial was added "The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial, Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically, considered." This discourse he

begins with the sacred garden in which the first man was placed, and deduces the practice of horticulture from the earliest accounts of antiquity to the time of the Persian Cyrus, the first man whom we actually know to have planted a quincunx; which, however, our author is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it in the description of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems willing to believe and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by the feeders on vegetables before the flood.

In the prosecution of this sport of fancy, he considers every production of art and nature in which he could find any decussation or approaches to the form of a quincunx; and as a man once resolved upon ideal discoveries seldom searches long in vain, he finds his favorite figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, sacred and civil; so that a reader, not watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx.

To show the excellence of this figure he enumerates all its properties, and finds it in almost every thing of use or pleasure; and to show how readily he supplies what he cannot find, one instance may be sufficient. "Though therein," says he, 66 we meet not with right angles, yet every rhombus containing four angles equal unto two right, it virtually contains two right in every one."

The fanciful sports of great minds are never without some advantage to knowledge. Browne has interspersed many curious observations on the form of plants and the laws of vegetation, and appears to have been a very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched with great nicety the evolution of the parts of plants from their seminal principles.

He is then naturally led to treat of the number Five, and finds that by this number many things are circumscribed; that there are five kinds of vegetable productions, five sections of a cone, five orders of architecture, and five acts of a play. And observing that five was the ancient conjugal or wedding number, he proceeds to a speculation which we shall give in his own words: "The ancient numerists made out the conjugal number by two and three, the first parity and imparity, the active and passive digits, the material and formal principles in generative societies."

These are all the tracts which he published. But many papers were found in his closet, "Some of them," says Whitefoot, "designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion of great and curious writers."

Of these, two collections have been published; one by Dr. Tenison, the other in 1722 by a nameless editor. Whether the one or the other selected those pieces which the author would have preferred, cannot be known; but they have both the merit of giving to mankind what was too valuable to be sup pressed, and what might, without their interposition,

have perhaps perished among other innumerable labors of learned men, or have been burnt in a scarcity of fuel like the papers of Peirescius.

The first of these posthumous treatises contains "Observations upon several Plants mentioned in Scripture." These remarks, though they do not immediately either rectify the faith or refine the morals of the reader, yet are by no means to be censured as superfluous niceties or useless speculations; for they often show some propriety of description, or elegance of allusion, utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in Oriental botany; and are often of more important use, as they remove some difficulty from narratives or some obscurity from precepts.

The next is, "Of Garlands, and Coronary or Garland Plants"; a subject merely of learned curiosity, without any other end than the pleasure of reflecting on ancient customs, or on the industry with which studious men have endeavoured to recover them.

The next is a letter, "Of the Fishes eaten by our Saviour with his Disciples, after his Resurrection from the Dead"; which contains no determinate resolution of the question, what they were, for indeed it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning could supply consists in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea.

Then follow "An Answer to certain Queries relating to Fishes, Birds, Insects"; and a letter "Of Hawks and Falconry, Ancient and Modern"; in the first of which he gives the proper interpretation of some ancient names of animals commonly mistaken,

and in the other has some curious observations on the art of hawking, which he considers as a practice unknown to the ancients.

In two more letters he speaks of the "Cymbals of the Hebrews," but without any satisfactory determination; and of "Ropalic or Gradual Verses," that is, of verses beginning with a word of one syllable, and proceeding by words of which each has a syllable more than the former; as,

"O Deus, æternæ stationis conciliator." AUSONIUS.

and after this manner pursuing the hint, he mentions many other restrained methods of versifying, to which industrious ignorance has sometimes voluntarily subjected itself.

His next attempt is, "On Languages, and particularly the Saxon Tongue." He discourses with great learning, and generally with great justness, of the derivation and changes of languages.

There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one, "Of Artificial Hills, Mounts, or Barrows, in England"; in reply to an interrogatory letter of E. D., whom the writers of the Biographia Britannica suppose to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or Sir William Dugdale, one of Browne's correspondents. These are declared by Browne, in concurrence, I think, with all other antiquaries, to be for the most part funeral monuments. He proves, that both the Danes and Saxons buried their men of emipence under piles of earth, "which admitting," says he "neither ornament, epitaph, nor inscription, may, if earthquakes spare them, outlast other monuments;