662 Cuvier and his Cabinet. [JUNE, 



spondence with Mr, Geoffroy, St. Helena, and from this step his advance 

 to the foremost rank in science was progressive. He obtained the chair of 

 comparative anatomy, and showed himself as eloquent an expounder, as 

 an acute discoverer of knowledge. 



The grandeur and lucidity of his views and lectures attracted peculiarly 

 the admiration of Napoleon. " That man," said he, " must be a good admi- 

 nistrator." Cuvier was nominated minister of public instruction; how 

 could there have been chosen one more suitable to Napoleon's ideas of 

 education, which, we need not say, went to make all men arithmeticians 

 and engineers, rather than generally informed and lettered. The " reports " 

 drawn up by Cuvier were the very models of their valuable sources of 

 information. 



Fortunately for his greatness, nevertheless, Cuvier was restored exclu- 

 sively to science in 1816. His being a Protestant alone was, in the eyes 

 of the dominant party, a crime only equalled by his having been a Buona- 

 partist. Cuvier retired (if the Jardins des Plantes, and all the society of 

 Paris, may be called retirement) to his fossil bones and geological dis- 

 coveries, the latter the most sublime and striking that he produced. 



The Bourbons, for all their high monarchical, soon perceived the utter 

 incapacity of the old noble and emigrant party. They were compelled to 

 have recourse to that host of capacites that Napoleon had developed and 

 cherished. Cuvier, never very marked in his political opinion, was 

 amongst the most useful, and he became again state counsellor, royal 

 commissary, and burdened with political functions. He was the atlas of 

 the Conseil d'Etat, or privy council, and to those who knew him it was 

 inconceivable how he could get through the various and gigantic tasks 

 committed to him. Like many great characters, his itch and inclination 

 were for these pursuits, in which there was most name and least honour. 

 Thus he took more pride in his counsellor's robe, than in his professor's 

 seat. In the last year of his life, Louis Philippe appointed him a peer: 

 he had been but a nominal baron previously. This new function of the 

 aristocratic legislator pleased him vastly ; so much so, that he abandoned 

 the all important occupation of completing his philosophical discoveries, 

 for the vain honour of sitting and debating in the House of Peers. And 

 this was the thought of remorse that tormented him at his death. 



I must profess myself no naturalist, and therefore quite unable to appre- 

 ciate the worth of Cuvier in his discoveries j but the facts and principles 

 which he established in geology, and in the ante-deluvian history of the 

 earth, are such as to meet the intelligence, and command the admiration 

 of the most unscientific reader. To Cuvier we owe the final blow given to 

 cosmogonies and absurd theories. Through Cuvier we now have in idea 

 the beginning of the world cradled at once in poesy and truth ; we dissect 

 its layers, and are made acquainted with at least its animal inhabitants. 

 Cuvier's theory is harmonious with the account of the Bible ; and in this 

 respect he stands alone amongst the entire scientific herd of France. Indeed 

 in his last lecture at the Sorbonne, in the College de France, Cuvier gave 

 a formal challenge to the Volney school, and received no answer. I well 

 remember in one of these lectures, his announcing, that if we take the 

 heaps, formed either at the feet of mountains, by the wearing away at the 

 top, or on the shore, by the daily carriage of the tide, and admeasure them 

 by their rate of progress, we shall find thum commence about the period 

 assigned to the cessation of the flood. A murmur of approbation from the 



