As soon as he had taken his university degree young Browne entered on the study of medicine:  and, in pursuit of that fast-rising science, he visited and studied in the most famous schools of France and Italy and Holland.  After various changes of residence, through all of which it is somewhat difficult to trace the young physician’s movements, we find him at last fairly settled in the city of Norwich, where he spent the remainder of his long, and busy, and prosperous, and honourable life.

Dr. Johnson laments that Sir Thomas Browne has left us no record of his travels and studies abroad, and all Sir Thomas’s readers will join with his great biographer in that regret.  At the same time, as we turn over the pile of letters that Sir Thomas sent to his student son Edward, and to his sailor son Thomas, when they were abroad at school and on ship, we can easily collect and picture to ourselves the life that the writer of those so wise and so beautiful letters led when he himself was still a student at Montpellier and Padua and Leyden.  ’Honest Tom,—­God bless thee, and protect thee, and mercifully lead thee through the ways of His providence.  Be diligent in going to church.  Be constant, and not negligent in your daily private prayers.  Be a good husband.  Cast up your accounts with all care.  Be temperate in diet, and be wary not to overheat yourself.  Be courteous and civil to all.  Live with an apothecary, and observe his drugs and practice.  Frequent civil company.  Point your letters, and put periods at the ends of your sentences.  Have the love and the fear of God ever before your eyes.  And may God confirm your faith in Christ.  Observe the manner of trade:  how they make wine and vinegar, and keep a note of all that for me.  Be courteous and humble in all your conversation, and of good manners:  which he that learneth not in France travaileth in vain.  When at sea read good books.  Without good books time cannot be well spent in those great ships.  Learn the stars also:  the particular coasts:  the depth of the road-steads:  and the risings and fallings of the land.  Enquire further about the mineral water:  and take notice of such plants as you meet with.  I am told that you are looked on in the Service as exceeding faithful, valiant, diligent, generous, vigilant, observing, very knowing, and a scholar.  When you first took to this manner of life, you cannot but remember that I caused you to read all the sea-fights of note in Plutarch:  and, withal, gave you the description of fortitude left by Aristotle.  In places take notice of the government of them, and the eminent persons.  The merciful providence of God ever go with you, and direct and bless you, and give you ever a grateful heart toward Him.  I send you Lucretius:  and with it Tully’s Offices:  ’tis as remarkable for its little size as for the good matter contained in it, and the authentic and classical Latin.  I hope you do not forget to carry a Greek Testament