Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/291

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had sunk into apathy broken only by intrigue and disorder, the nation was of no account. Then the son of a poor country priest, endowed merely with the divine love of nature and of knowledge, fought his way through school and university, and by constant observation and diligent study of subjects to which neither scholars nor men of the world then paid much attention, won a place among the great ones of the earth. Installed at Upsala, the youthful Linnæus first attracted thither students and men of science from all Europe, and then sent them through the whole world as gleaners of further knowledge and ambassadors of his country's new-found fame. Never since has Sweden relapsed from the high place thus won for her among nations in the wider world of scientific thought.