not merely as regards vegetation, but also in reference to meteorology, geology, and zoology, with their bearings on botany. On his return from the antarctic expedition he held an appointment in the Museum of Economic Geology in London, and was engaged in the survey of England. He contributed to the Transactions of that institution an interesting and most suggestive paper "On the Vegetation of the Carboniferous period as compared with that of the present day." This paper should be carefully perused by all fossil botanists. In 1848 he started on an expedition to the Sikkim Himalayas, and spent between three and four years in examining their flora. He received some aid from government, but the greater part of the expense was defrayed by himself. In the course of his travels he experienced many adventures, and was at one time made prisoner by the rajah of Sikkim. In 1851 a splendid work by him "On the Rhododendrons of Sikkim" appeared. These plants have been introduced by him into this country, and are important additions to our gardens. In 1852, on his return to England, he published his "Himalayan Journals," in two volumes. These contain a general account of his travels, and are full of valuable botanical facts, interspersed with remarks which render the work one of the most readable of the scientific productions of the day. The collections he made in India were very large, and he has accumulated materials for an account of the plants of that country. One volume of the "Flora Indica," drawn up with the assistance of Dr. Thomas Thomson, has appeared. The expense of this volume was very large, and as the East India Company refused pecuniary aid, the work has for the time unfortunately been stopped, and the authors are in the meantime printing "Precursores Floræ Indicæ, or descriptions of Indian plants," in the Journal of Proceedings of the Linnæan Society. It is to be hoped that, by the liberality of government, the "Flora Indica" will ere long be resumed and completed. The collections made by Hooker have, with true liberality, been widely distributed to the various public herbaria in the country and abroad. On his return from the Himalaya, Hooker married the eldest daughter of the Rev. J. S. Henslow, professor of botany, Cambridge. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, a vice-president of the Linnæan Society, examiner in natural science to the East India Company, and has been appointed assistant to his father at Kew. He takes charge of the economic museum, the herbarium, and the naming of the plants. He is engaged with Mr. Bentham in a most important work on the genera of plants, which will, when completed, be one of the most valuable contributions to science. He has read many important papers to the Royal, Linnæan, and other societies, which have appeared in their Transactions. His elaborate paper on Balanophoraceæ in the Linnæan Transactions, is a pattern of scientific acumen; and his descriptions of orders, genera, and species, show a power of diagnosis, an appreciation of affinities, and an accuracy of details which are remarkable. His scientific attainments are of a first-rate order, and it is to be hoped that ere long he will receive from government that full recognition which his distinguished services merit.—J. H. B.
HOOKER, Richard, the famed author of the "Ecclesiastical Polity," was born at Exeter, or its near neighbourhood, in 1553 or 1554. The county of Devon was prolific of great men at that period—it gave Jewel and Reynolds to the church, and Drake and Raleigh to the state. Hooker's parents were so poor that they could not give their son a liberal education, though his grandfather had been chief magistrate of Exeter in 1529, and his great-grandfather had represented the city in parliament in the reigns of Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry VII. But through the kindness of his uncle, the chamberlain of Exeter, Hooker enjoyed a good preparatory training, and was through the medium of the same relative introduced to Jewel, bishop of Salisbury, who in 1567 procured him a clerkship in Corpus Christi college, Oxford, of which college he became a scholar in 1573, and a fellow and master of arts in 1577. In 1579 he was appointed university Hebrew lecturer, and in October the same year was expelled from his college, with some other fellows, but was immediately after restored. After three years' residence as fellow he took orders, having at college enriched "his quiet and capacious soul with all the precious learning of the philosophers, casuists, and schoolmen," and soon was appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, London. Preachers going up from the country in this way had "lodgings and diet" two days before the sermon and one day after it in a certain house, called after the fashion of the times the "Shunamite's house." Mrs. Churchman, who kept this prophet's chamber, is plainly accused by Walton of inveigling Hooker into a marriage with her daughter Joan, the nuptials taking place during the following year. His fellowship ceased on his marriage, which, according to report, was far from being happy, and he was presented to the living of Drayton-Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire in 1584. He remained only a year in this place, where two of his pupils, Edward Sandys and George Cranmer, nephew of the archbishop, paid him a visit, and found him not in his study but "tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field." On their going home at length with him, their peaceful intercourse was rudely interrupted by a shrill voice, crying for "Richard to come and rock the cradle." As they parted Cranmer could not but hint at his domestic discomfort, to which the sage replied, that "as saints have usually a double share of the miseries of this present life it did not become him to repine; he submitted to the Divine will, and laboured to possess his soul in patience." It is hard to say where the fault lay. Wood, indeed, calls Mrs. Hooker "a clownish, silly woman." There was apparent incompatibility between them. Perhaps, like Milton, his self-communing and lofty soul might wear a stately coldness; and there was probably indifference on the part of her who, as old Izaak says, brought him "neither beauty nor fortune," for she married again about three months after Hooker's death. Sandys, one of his visitors, appealed to his father, who was archbishop of York, on behalf of Hooker, and he became master of the Temple in 1585. He was soon involved in controversy with Travers the afternoon lecturer, and after Cartwright, the most distinguished puritan leader of the day. The discussion was the leading one of the times—on predestination, church law, and ceremonial, and it was taken by the disputants to the same pulpit; it was "Canterbury in the morning, and Geneva in the afternoon." Travers was at length silenced by Archbishop Whitgift, and as his consequent appeal to the privy council was rejected, he published it, and Hooker immediately replied. This controversy, doubtless, suggested to Hooker the outline of his great work, which, however, he felt could only be elaborated in perfect quietude in some place where he "could eat his bread in privacy and peace." Therefore, on his earnest application to the archbishop he was presented in 1591 to the living of Boscombe in Wiltshire, in the diocese of Sarum; and on the 17th July of the same year he became a prebend of Salisbury. At Boscombe he completed and published in 1594 the first four books of the "Ecclesiastical Polity." In July, 1595, the queen presented him to the living of Bishopsbourn in Kent, and not far from Canterbury. There he spent the five remaining years of his life, and published the fifth book of his "Polity." On a voyage from London to Gravesend he caught a cold, under which he gradually sunk. The well-known high churchman Saravia, one of the prebends of Canterbury, administered the sacrament to him the day before his death, when his conversation was of "the perturbations of this world" in contrast with "the peace and order of heaven, the number and nature of the angels, and their blessed obedience." Hooker died on the 2nd of November, 1600, and was buried in his church at Bishopsbourn, where a monument, thirty-five years afterwards, was erected to his memory by Sir William Cowper. The three last books of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" had not been published at the author's death. Walton tells a story of their mutilation by some puritan ministers. His widow apparently could give little account of them, though she was summoned before the privy council. While Walton's gossip may not be entitled to full credit, it seems plain that the sixth book especially has been tampered with, as it unaccountably digresses from the topic proposed for discussion. The seventh book was first published by Gaudon, bishop of Worcester, who affirms that the MS. was in Hooker's own handwriting. The eighth book appeared along with the sixth in 1651.
The "Ecclesiastical Polity" is a great monumental work, though one may not agree with all its positions. This, however, is not the place to debate such points. It was not reactionary in the proper sense, though it was strongly anti-puritan. Some may reckon it a suspicious compliment that it was praised by Pope Clement VIII. and James I.; nay, James II. is said to have ascribed his conversion to popery to the eloquence of the preface. Indeed sometimes Hooker's broad principles are so stated and generalized, that bigotry might easily narrow their application to its own ends. Extremes on each side were
