CHAGRINED AND OPPRESSED. 169

might have cheered him, his only hope being that
he might hereafter publish his discoveries, so ag to
secure some benefit to the world and some honour
to himself. But this last consolation was denied
him. He was not suffered to depart till all hig
MSS. had been copied, and he had given a written
promise never to publish anything till the return
of his travelling companions. In the meanwhile
those very companions were detained by authority
in Peru; and in after times many of the original
botanical descriptions of Dombey appeared ver-
batim, without acknowledgment, in the pompous
flora of Peru and Chili, which thence derived a
great part of its value. Thus chagrined and op-
pressed, the unhappy Dombey was permitted to
return—with such part of his collections as they
suffered him to retain—to Paris.

There, in 1786, he appeared, “no longer (says
the same writer) the handsome lively votary of
pleasure, nor even the ardent enthusiastic cultivator
of science. The leaden hand of tyranny had im-
pressed its own stamp on his countenance, and he
had the sallow, silent, melancholy aspect of a
depressed and disappointed Spaniard. He chiefly
associated with his faithful friends Le Mounier and
Thouin, and in their society botanical converse stil]
retained its charms. To the contents of his own
collection, which, however injured and diminished,