t of his character. We find him counselling Ann Chappell,
at about the time when he became engaged to her:* (* Flinders' Papers.)
"Learn music, learn the French language, enlarge the subjects of thy
pencil, study geography and astronomy and even metaphysics, sooner than
leave thy mind unoccupied. Soar, my Annette, aspire to the heights of
science. Write a great deal, work with thy needle a great deal, and read
every book that comes in thy way, save trifling novels."

Flinders read widely, and always carried a good library with him on his
voyages. His acquaintance with the literature of navigation was very
extensive. Some of his books were lost in the Porpoise wreck; the
remainder he took with him in the Cumberland, and, when he was
imprisoned, his anxiety to secure his printed volumes manifested the true
book-lover's hunger to have near him those companions of his intellectual
life. He derived great pleasure from the French literature which he
studied in Mauritius. A letter to his wife dated March, 1803, when he was
upon the north coast of Australia in the Investigator, reveals him
relieving his mind, amid anxieties about the condition of the ship, by
reading Milton's Paradise Lost. "The elevation and, also, the fall of our
first parents," he comments, "told with such majesty by him whose eyes
lacked all of what he threw so masterly o'er the great subject, dark
before and intricate--these with delight I perused, not knowing which to
admire most, the poet's daring, the subject, or the success with which
his bold attempt was crowned." He somewhat quaintly compares his wife
with Eve: "But in thee I have more faith than Adam had when he, complying
with Eve's request of separation in their labours, said 'Go, thou best,
last gift of God, go in thy native innocence.' But how much dearer art
thou here than our first mother! Our separation was not sought by thee,
but thou borest it as a vine whose twining arms when turned from round
the limb lie prostrate, broken, life scarcely left enough to keep the
withered leaf from falling off." We should especially have welcomed notes
from such a pen on a few passages in Milton which must have stirred his
deepest interest, as for example the majestic comparison of Satan's
flight:

"As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate or Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they on the trading fl