Note 22 — PREFACE.

Monsieur Thomas, in his eulogy of Descartes says, it should have been pronounced at the foot of Newton's statue: or rather, Newton himself should have been his panegyrist. Of this eulogy, Voltaire, in a most handsome letter to Mons. Thomas, thus speaks:—"votre ouvrage m'enchante d'un bout a l'autre, et Je vais le relire dès que J'aurai dicté ma lettre." The sleep and expanding of flowers are most interestingly reviewed by Mr. Loudon in p. 187 of his Encyclop., and by M. V. H. de Thury, in the above discourse, a few pages preceding his seducing description of the magnificent garden of M. de Boursault.

So late ago as the year 1804 it was proposed at Avignon, to erect an obelisk in memory of Petrarch, at Vaucluse: "il a été décidé, qu'on l'élevera, vis-avis l'ancien jardin de Petrache, lieu oû le lit de sorgue forme un angle."