The same merits belong to his History of the earli est Voyages wade in modern times; a highly interesting collection, which occupied the last years of his life, and which he left at the eighth number. Another result of the literary application of the industry of Beckmann was a return to the studies of humanity, to which we are indebted for editions of the work De Mirabilibus A uscultationibus, attributed to Aristotle (1786); of the Wonderful Histories of Antigonus Carystius (1791); and of Marbodius's Treatise on Stones (1799);---edi tions which required the rare union of physical knowledge and sagacity with philological learning. The Royal Society of Gottingen had, in the year 1772, admitted him one of its members, and, from that period to 1783, Beckmann supplied their pro ceedings with interesting memoirs, among which are the following : On the Reduction of Fossils to their Original Substances.—On the History of Alum.—On the Sap of Madder.—On the Froth of the Sea, from which the Heads areformedfor the Nicotian On the History of Sugar.* But, from this period, he desisted all at once from partaking the labours of this learned body, probably from the same motives that we have assigned above for the change in the objects of his own particular studies. He was, besides, mo dest to an extreme degree ; and his natural timidity did not find any thing to counteract it in the tradi tional jealousy of reputation, which the example of his predecessors, who had founded the glory of Got tingen, had transmitted to a generation more confi dent of its powers, and more vain of its merit, but still restrained by habits difficult to lay aside, when the respect for great authorities had originally sanc tioned them. His candour, his sincerity, his fidelity
in his affability to his scholars, have been celebrated with one accord by his coadjutors and his auditors. Schlsetzer, whom he had known from his youth in Russia, was the one among his colleagues with whom he maintained, the most uninterrupted timacy. He was better qualified than almost any one else, to appreciate the researches of Beckmann, as he had himself insisted with so much force on the necessity of introducing into history a view of the influence exercised on social institutions by the ef forts of industry, and by the birth or maturity of the most common arts. Beckmann died the 3d of Fe bruary 1811, after having been admitted into almost all the learned societies of Germany and the north, and after having impressed a tendency to pursuits of practical utility on the minds of a multitude of dis tinguished young men who had attended his lectures, and whom his celebrity drew to Gottingen during the forty-five years of his professorship. A portrait of him will be found at the head of the twelfth vo lume of the Economical Encyclopedia of Krunitz, and it has been engraved separately by Raid, Schwenter ley, and Grape. Beckmann married the daughter of Hohmann, his tutor and friend ; she survived him only a few weeks, and they left a son and daughter grown up. His eulogium was pronounced by his colleague, the illustrious Heyne, and was published at Gottingen, with this title: Memoria Joan. Beck ' mann, Soc. R. Sci. Gutting. sodalis in concessu Soc.