COOPER 



in his attempt to capture the good will of his 

 auditor. However, if there was no covert 

 artifice, there was at all events the native 

 shrewdness of the Swiss peasant to reckon with, 

 and doubtless the subtlety of genius which 

 will not, or cannot, always reveal itself in full. 

 In his later years, accordingly, though his 

 winning manners and his desire that you should 

 completely display your thought to him might 

 lead you to suppose him utterly open with 

 you, you might in the end discover that you 

 had not fathomed his soul, that there was 

 that in him which could not be taken captive, 

 and that there might be a silent invincible re- 

 jection on his part of something within you 

 which was foreign to him. 



In Agassiz the theoretical and the practical 

 life were well balanced. He was both a vision- 

 ary and a man capable of bringing his visions 

 to pass. No philosophical conception was too 

 general for him, and no detail of observation or 

 inference too small. No fact could appear too 

 slight for his intense and comprehensive scru- 

 tiny, and his memory for minute resemblances 

 and differences was vast; yet the enduring 



[58] 



