174 BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF 
as Professor of Vegetable Organography to the Scientific Faculty ; he 
was then in the full prime of his talents. His high reputation, the 
popularity of his botanical excursions, the simplicity and clearness of 
his diction, attracted an attentive audience, where the statesman and 
the literary character might be seen mingling, as they often did in the 
herborizing rambles, with the young students. When first accepting 
the chair, M. de Jussieu had expressed his intention of avoiding all 
needless brilliancy of language, and of so uniting simplicity, precision, 
brevity, and method, as to be intelligible to all his very miscellaneous 
auditory. I cannot better characterize his teaching than by saying 
that it was founded on the principles laid down in his ‘ Vegetable Taxo- 
nomy.’ The object which he kept constantly before him, and to which 
he directed all his views, was to point out the great influence exerted 
by the natural method on the sciences of observation: he sought to 
exemplify, in their fullest sense, those remarkable words of Cuvier, 
** The natural system is science reduced to its simplest expression." 
It was seldom that he became animated: calmness was the feature 
of his manners, as timidity was of his disposition; and he preferred, 
among his hearers, those individuals who displayed a character like his 
own,—placid, earnest, and deferential. To see that amiable /aisser-al/er, 
that easy and witty conversation, which enlivened his botanical excur- 
sions, you must have followed him into the open air, where, compara- 
tively free and independent, he could throw off the trammels of the 
professor. Released from the heavy responsibility of public instruction, 
he began a kind of private teaching, cheerfully answering the many 
questions which were put to him, and often recapitulating, in the freest 
manner, all the lessons of his professorial chair. He enlivened his 
conversation with anecdotes, and beeame so infinitely attractive, that 
students often urged him to allow them to accompany him, not 
nly through the Court of the Sorbonne, but to his own dwelling. 
d The custom,—now, alas! but traditional,—which the older professors 
_ had pursued, of making friends of their pupils, was kept up by M. de 
Jussieu: he took part in their exertions, he encouraged and applauded 
them, and with all the sincerity of his own mind, he rejoiced in their 
success, and felt delight in guiding their inexperienee by his truly 
paternal counsels. : 
- When he became Aane of the Academy of Sciences, in 1831, it 
Was often M. de Jussieu's part to give an opinion on the Essays sub- 
