Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Entomology.djvu/51

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MEMOIR OF SWAMMERDAM.
45

and proceedings of this enthusiast, were devising measures to have her expelled from the province, and on becoming aware of their intention, she wished to take shelter in the king of Denmark's dominions. Swammerdam, and another disciple, were appointed to visit the Danish court, to ask permission to make this change of residence—a commission which he readily undertook. He accordingly set out for Copenhagen, on the 25th March 1676; but was wholly unsuccessful in his object. He returned to Sleswick to give a report of his reception, and after a short residence there, went back to Amsterdam.

His prospects in that city had not improved in his absence; his father, whose resentment had been somewhat mitigated of late, was irrecoverably alienated from him by his recent imprudence. His sister Joanna, too, who had resided with his father since his wife's death, and often interceded with him on her brother's behalf, had just been married; and his father having resolved to live henceforth with his son-in-law, Swammerdam found himself at last deprived of a home. In this exigency, two hundred florins a-year allowed him by his father, was all that he had to depend upon, and this being inadequate to defray his necessary expenses, he was obliged to think of some plan for relieving his necessities. A gentleman of rank, John Ort of Nieuwenrode, Breukele, &c., who had been long on terms of intimate friendship with Swammerdam, had often entertained him at his country-seat, and even proposed that he should take up his residence there altogether, that