In 1753, finding his strength unequal to the labours of his situation, conjoined with the execution of the plans of writing which he meditated, he resolved to return to Berne, to pass the remainder of his life. The seventeen years which he had spent at Gottingen, though brilliant in the eyes of Europe, and attended with much gratification to his own mind, were also marked with traces of affecting domestic vicissitudes. Two years. after he had lost his wife in the manner already related, he married a second, who died a few months after marriage. He then married a third, who was his companion for the rest of his days. For thus consoling himself twice, after the death of the individual bound to him by the closest ties, he was subject ed, as usually happens, to the censure of weak and vain persons, who affect a character for sensibility, because their taste leads them to admire consistency in unhappiness in an object to which, with the eyes of critical amateurs, they occasionally turn their attention, and who demand, for the gratification of that. preposterous selfishness, that the most worthy characters should be involVed in permanent bitterness, bereft at once of self-command and consolation. Haller was not chargeable with that harsh apathy of which the ancient Stoics are sometimes accused. He allowed the tides of sensibility on proper occasions to overflow; but, with the most rational of that sect, he set bounds to this indulgence ; considering protracted tears as equally unbecoming with inordinate laughter. In an elegant poem, entitled Doris, he expressed the tenderest attachment to his first wife, and his sincere grief after her decease. In another monody within three years, he celebrated his se cond ; and with the third, he spent many years in the en joyment of the most respectable state of domestic happi ness.
On his return to Berne, he was received by his coun trymen with genuine affection and delight. He had the fortune to obtain the honourable situation of governor of the town-house, which was awarded by lot.
In a year after his return, he published his Onuscula Pathologica, a work containing some curious facts in mor bid anatomy. It contained also a description of a singular epidemic which had appeared in Switzerland, a sort of bilious pleurisy, in which venesection was unfavourable. He made experiments on the medical power of electricity in deafness, a subject which then excited much attention in Europe, and he pronounced it wholly ineffectual. He sometimes made botanical excursions, sometimes dissected animals, and published ingenious accounts of such physio logical results as he obtained ; for example, the growth of the hones, the structure of the brain and eyes of fishes, the anatomy of the chick in ovo, and the general subject of generation. One of his conclusions on this last subject was, that the female has by far the greatest share in the production of the foetus.
The most complete work of Haller, and that which will always be most perused, was his great System of Physio logy in eight quarto volumes, which he began in 1757 and finished in 1766. This work contains a complete account of all the facts then known on this extensive subject, mi nute anatomical descriptions of the structure of the organs, and a detail of the systematic opinions of former authors.
By this work he for ever rescued physiology from the de gradation of being the sport of vain hypothesis : he divest ed it of the spurious riches with which fancy had decorat ed it, and in their stead exhibited a collection of facts, which was at once solid and extensive, and led the way for the accumulation of further results of observation and ex periment, from which just theories might gradually arise.
In 1772,1773, and 1774, he amused himself by publish ing, in the form of three romances, his thoughts on the de grees of happiness to be enjoyed under different forms of political government. In the first, entitled Uaong, he de lineated the happiness arising from the administration of a virtuous and judicious despotio monarch, who encourages justice and morality. In the second, illfred, he represent ed that ol a limited monarchy, in which the nobles and peo ple preserve their right to a share in the management of the public interests; and the king, while lie regulates the state, pays respect to established forms, consults. systema tically the public voice, and exerts himself to maintain that constitution by which his own power is at once prevented from becoming lawless, and assisted in the dispensation of national benefits. In the third, entitled Fabius and Cato, he described a well-regulated aristocracy. Where it is dangerous to insist on the desirableness of a complete change ol government, it is wise to endeavour to stimulate• to virtue those in whose power the destinies of the human race are placed. At the same time it is a beneficial exer cise of a philosophical talent to speculate on the most eligi ble forms for those communities which have as yet no es tablished government, or for those eras of revolution in which the persons qualified to judge of what is best, and possessed of power by their union to adopt it, are perfectly disposed to embrace such institutions as would contribute most effectually to the perpetual welfare of society. On this speculation Haller did not enter farther, than by slim ing himself partial to an aristocracy like that of his native country ; nor did he so far complete his plan, as to paint the advantages of the best state of a democracy.
Haller drew up several articles for the French Encyclo pedie : and he long guarded the interests of general litera ture, by writing in the German review at Gottingen. The articles of which he was the author in that work amounted to 1500.
His last works were, his Bibliotheca Botanices, ex, Chirurgie et Medicine Practice. In this extensive and well digested list of authors, he points out in the amplest manner, and with a luminous arrangement, the sources from which he derived his knowledge, and from which it might be obtained by others. It is written in the order of time, in subdivisions corresponding to the different epochs and schools of systematic opinion, and to each subdivision a short descriptive sketch of the period or sect in these sciences is.prefixed. It thus exhibits an interesting histo ry of the advances of science, accompanied. by a full enu meration of the literary monuments which serve for the re cords of knowledge and opinion. His Bibliotheca Medicine was not completed. He had it also in view to form a simi lar work on Natural Philosophy.