290 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. xn. 



life,- -public lectures. He was impressed by the seri- 

 ousness of his listeners, although he knew well that 

 only a small part of the audience was able to under- 

 stand the full meaning of what he said ; but it was very 

 encouraging to see so many ladies and gentlemen of 

 the world ignorant, almost all of them, of the first ele- 

 ments of natural history, listening attentively to what 

 he had to say. It showed a desire to learn, or at least 

 to be instructed on points in regard to which very 

 few of them before entering the lecture-room had 

 the least knowledge. It was a revelation to him, 

 which from that day caused a great change not only 

 in his scientific life, but also in his social and family 

 habits. 



It is fortunate for the progress of science, to which 

 Agassiz contributed so largely during his twenty years 

 of work in Europe, that he did not begin his scientific 

 life in America, for his extraordinary ability as a 

 teacher would have absorbed all his time. To be sure, 

 he would have popularized natural history, by a con- 

 stant contact, of forty-five years' duration, with the 

 general mass of the American people ; but he would 

 never have undertaken his " Poissons fossiles," and 

 many other of his original works. Although his first 

 course of lectures in America, at the Lowell Institute, 

 was a success, Agassiz felt that a part of his power was 

 paralyzed, in a great degree, by the difficulty he expe- 

 rienced in using the English language. For a man who 

 was a good scholar in Latin, in Greek, in French, and 

 in German, it was painful to realize how incorrect his 

 English was, and it was a great regret to him not to be 



