Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas. 235 



fectly made its way to his retirement. His depressed spirits 

 seemed entirely to revive' with these sudden enjoyments. 



The young naturalists, formed by his works, brought up in 

 the admiration of his genius, but to whom he had been but an 

 invisible oracle, listened to him as to a superior being come to 

 judge them ; for his long absence had multiplied the time, and 

 put as it were several generations between them and him. They 

 assert, that, in the frank and prompt approbation which lie 

 gave to the new discoveries, there was in fact to be recognised 

 in this good old man, a mind superior to the prejudices natural 

 to his age. He treated his new disciples as a father, and not 

 with the dogmatism and superciliousness of an old master. It 

 is a beautiful trait in his character, that he was little disposed to 

 criticise, and willingly gave to his contemporaries the praises 

 which they deserved, — an effort fully as meritorious as that of 

 giving them to his pupils. He is also perhaps the least criti- 

 cised by others of any distinguished writer of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. He has sometimes been reproached with somewhat of 

 keenness and severity, for bringing together, for engrossing, as it 

 were, by every possible means, the observations or the objects of 

 study collected by others, — a quality calculated to displease those 

 whose particular labours might be lost in the mass of glory, which 

 legitimately belongs to the man who has conceived a great plan, 

 but without which a multitude of facts, useful only from their 

 association, would have been lost to science. Nor did he ever 

 make use of the observations of others, without explicitly ren- . 

 dering justice to their authors. 



Having thus returned to the country which had given him 

 birth, and to friends who appreciated his merits ; having again 

 drawn near to an elder brother, toward whom so long a separa- 

 tion had only caused his natural attachment to become stronger; 

 attended by his only daughter, who cherished him with the 

 greatest tenderness, Pallas still had the prospect of some happy 

 years. He read with interest the new works on Natural His- 

 tory ; he proposed to visit the cities of France and Italy that 

 were richest in instructive collections, to form acquaintance with 

 the distinguished men which they possessed, and thus to collect 

 new materials for a concluding work. But the germs of dis- 

 eases which he had contracted on his journeys, and during his 



