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THIS learned and truly valuable man, to whom posterity is mainly indebted for the introduction of Botany in this kingdom, was, according to Anthony Wood, a Fleming, or a Dutchman. We are informed by Parkinson, that he had travelled into most parts of Europe, and into Barbary, and there remains a tradition, that in 1620 John Tradescant entered himself on board a privateer going against the Algerines, that he might have an opportunity of bringing apricot trees from that country.

In his travels he is supposed to have collected not only plants and seeds, but most of those curiosities of every sort, which, after his death, were given by his son to the famous Elias Ashmole, and deposited in his museum at Oxford.

On what occasion and at what period he came into England, is not precisely ascertained, but it may be supposed to have been about the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, or the beginning of that of James I. He is said to have been for a considerable time in the service of Lord Treasurer Salisbury and Lord Weston. About 1629 he obtained the title of gardener to Charles I.; he was a man of extraordinary curiosity, and the first in this country who made any considerable collection of the subject of natural history. He had a son of the same name, who took a voyage to Virginia, whence he returned with many new plants. They were the means of introducing a variety of curious species into this kingdom, several of which bore their name. Tradescant's spiderwort and aster are well known to this day; and Linnæus has immortalized them among the botanists, by making a new genus under their names of the spiderwort, which had been before called ephemeron.

Earls of Salisbury, and many other persons of distinction.

The Tradescants were usually called Tradeskin by their contemporaries; the name is uniformly so spelt in the parish register, and by Flatman the painter, who, in a poem, mentions Tradescant's collection:

"Thus John Tradeskin starves our wondering eyes,

:

By boxing up his new-found rarities."

The elder Tradescant died in 1652, and the son in 1662; the curious monument was erected by Hester, the relict of John Tradescant the son; a beautiful drawing of it in its original state is in the Pepysian library at Cambridge; they have been engraved in the Philosophical Transactions. An engraving of it in its present state is placed as a vignette at the head of this article. It is covered on each of its four sides with sculptures; viz, on the North, a crocodile, shells, &c. and a view of some Egyptian buildings; on the South, broken columns, corinthian capitals, &c. supposed to be ruins in Greece, or some eastern countries; on the East, Tradescant arms: on a bend three fleurs-de-lys, impaling a passant; on the West, a hydra, and under it a skull, various figures of trees, &c. in relievo, adorn the four corners of this monument; over it is placed a handsome tablet of black marble, with the following inscription:

lion

THE TOUCHY LADY.

(From the New Monthly Magazine.)

ONE of the most unhappy persons whom it has been my fortune to encounter, is a pretty woman of thirty, or thereabout, healthy, wealthy, and of good repute, with a fine house, a fine family, and an excellent husband. A solitary calamity renders all these bles., sings of no avail :--the gentlewoman is touchy. This affliction has given a colour to her whole life. Her biography has a certain martial dignity, like the history ofa nation; she dates from battle to battle, and passes her days in an interminable civil war.

The first person who, long before she could speak, had the misfortune to offend the young lady, was her nurse; then in quick succession four nursery maids, who were turned away, poor things! because Miss Anne could not abide them; then her brother Harry, by being born and diminishing her importance; then three governesses; then two writingmasters; then one music-mistress; then a whole school. On leaving school, affronts multiplied of course; and she has been in a constant miff with servants, tradespeople, relations and friends, ever since; so that although really pretty (at least she would be so if it were not for a standing frown and a certain watchful defying look in her eyes), decidedly clever and accomplished, and particularly charitable, as far as giving money goes, (your ill-tempered woman has often that redeeming grace,) she is known only by her one absorbing quality of touchiness, and is dreaded and hated accordingly by every one who has the honour of her acquaintance.

Paying her a visit is one of the most formidable things that can be imagined, one of the trials which in a small way demand the greatest resolution. It is so difficult to find what to say. You must make up your mind to the affair, as you do when going into a shower-bath. Differing from her is obviously pulling the string; and agreeing with her too often or too pointedly is nearly as bad: she then suspects you of suspecting her infirmity, of which she has herself a glimmering consciousness, and treats you with a sharp touch of it accordingly. But what is there that she will not suspect? Admire the colours of a new carpet, and she thinks you are looking at some invisible hole; praise the pattern of a morning cap, and she accuses you of thinking it too gay. She has an ingenuity of perverseness which brings all subjects nearly to a level. The mention

of her neighbours is evidently taboo, since it is at least twenty to one but she is in a state of affront with nine-tenths of them: her own family are also taboo for the same reason. Books are particularly unsafe. She stands vibrating on the pinnacle where two fears meet, ready to be suspected of blue-stockingism on the one hand, or of ignorance and frivolity on the other, just as the work you may chance to name happens to be recondite or popular; nay sometimes the same production shall excite both feelings. Have you read Hajji Baba," said I to her one day last winter. "Hajj Baba the Persian?". "Really, Ma'am, 1 am no orientalist."—" Hajji Baba, the clever Persian tale?" continued I, determined not to be daunted. "I believe Miss R." rejoined she, "that you think I have nothing better to do than to read novels." And so shesnip-snaps to the end of the visit. Even the Scotch novels, which she does own to reading, are no resource in her desperate case. There we are shipwrecked on the rocks oftaste. A difference there is fatal. She takes to those delicious books as personal property, and spreads over them the prickly shield of her protection in the same spirit with which she appropriates her husband and her children; is buffy if you prefer Guy Mannering to the Antiquary, and quite jealous if you presume to praise Jeanie Deans; thus cutting off his Majesty's lieges from the most approved topic of discussion amongst civilized people, a neutral ground as open and various as the weather, and far more delightful. But what did I say? The very weather is with her no prudent word. She pretends to skill in that science of guesses commonly called weather-wisdom, and a fog, or a shower, or a thunder-storm, or the blessed sun himself, may have been rash enough to contradict her bodements, and put her out of humour for the day.

Her own name has all her life long been a fertile source of misery to this unfortunate lady. Her maiden name was Smythe, Anne Smythe. Now Smythe, although perfectly genteel and unexceptionable to look at, a pattern appellation on paper, was in speaking no way distinguished from the thousands of common Smiths who cumber the world. She never heard that "word of fear," especially when introduced to a new acquaintance, without looking as if she longed to spell it. Anue was bad enough; people had housemaids of that name, as if to make a confusion; and her grandmamma insisted on omitting the final e, in which important vowel was seated all it could boast of elegance or dignity;

and once a brother of fifteen, the identical brother Harry, an Etonian, a pickle, one of that order of clever boys who seem born for the torment of their female relatives, foredoomed their sister's soul to cross, actually went so far as to call her Nanny! She did not box his ears, although how near her tingling fingers' ends approached to that consummation, it is not my business to tell. Having suffered so much from the perplexity of her equivocal maiden name, she thought herself most lucky in pitching on the thoroughly well-looking and well sounding appellation of Morley for the rest of her life. Mrs. Morley-nothing could be better. For once there was a word that did not affront her. The first alloy to this satisfaction was her perceiving on the bridal cards, Mr. and Mrs. B. Morley, and hearing that close to their future residence lived a rich bachelor uncle, till whose death that fearful diminution of her consequence, the Mrs. B., must be endured. Mrs. B.! The brow began to wrinkle- Jut it was the night before the wedding, the uncle had made some compensation for the crime of being born thirty years before his nephew, in the shape of a superb set of emeralds, and by a fortunate mistake, she had taken it into her head that B. in the present case stood for Basil, so that the loss of dignity being compensated by an encrease of elegance, she bore the shock pretty well. It was not till the next morning, during the ceremony, that the full extent of her misery burst upon her, and she found that B. stood not for Basil, but for Benjamin. Then the veil fell off; then the full horror of her situation, the affront of being a Mrs. Benjamin, stared her full in the face; and certainly but for the accident of her being struck dumb by indignation, she never would have married a man SO ignobly christened. Her fate has been even worse than then appeared probable; for her husbaud, an exceedingly popular and convivial person, was known all over his own country by the familiar diminutive of his ill-omened appellation; so that she found herself not merely a Mrs. Benjamin, but a Mrs. Ben., the wife of a Ben. Morley, junior, esq. (for the peccant uncle was also godfather and namesake) the future mother of a Ben Morley the third---Oh, the Miss Smith, the Ann, even the Nancy, shrank into nothing when compared with that short word.

Neither is she altogether free from misfortunes on her side of the house. There is a terrible més alliance in her own family. Her favourite aunt, the widow

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of an officer, with five portionless chil dren, became one fair morning the wife of a rich mercer in Cheapside, thus at a stroke gaining comfort and losing caste. The manner in which this affected poor Mrs. Ben. Morley, is inconceiveable. She talked of the unhappy connexion, as aunts are wont to talk when neices get paired at Gretna Green, wrote a formal renunciation of the culprit, and has considered herself insulted ever since if any ones mentions a silk gown in her presence. Another affliction, brought on her by her own family, is the production of a farce by her brother Harry (born for her plague) at Covent Garden Theatre. The farce was damned, as the author (a clever young Templar) declares, most deservedly. He bore the catastrophe with great heroism; and celebrated its downfall by venting sundry good puns and drinking an extra bottle of claret; leaving to Anne, sister Anne, the pleasant employment of fuming over his discomfiture,---a task which she performed con amore. Actors, manager, audience and author, seventeen newspapers and three magazines, had the misfortune to displease her on this occasion ;---in short, the whole town. Theatres and newspapers, critics and the drama, have been banished from her conversation ever since. She would as lieve talk of a silk-mercer.

Next after her visitors, her correspondents are to be pitied; they had need look to their P's and Q's, their spelling and their stationary. If you write a note to her, be sure that the paper is the best double post, hot pressed and giltedged; that your pen is in good order; that your "dear madams" have a proper mixture of regard and respect; and that your foldings and sealings are unexcep. tionable. She is of a sort to faint at the absence of an envelope, and to die of a wafer. Note, above all, that your address be perfect; that your to be not forgotten; that the offending Benjamin be omitted; and that the style and title of her mansion, SHAWFORD MANOR HOUSE, be set forth in full glory. And when this is achieved, make up your mind to her taking some inexplicable affront after all. Thrice fortunate would he be who could put twenty words together without affronting her. Besides, she is great at a scornful reply, and shall keep up a quarrelling correspondence with any lady in Great Britain. Her letters are like challenges; and, but for the protection of the petticoat, she would have fought fifty duels before now, and have been either killed or quieted long ago.

If her husband had been of her temper, she would have brought him into twenty