BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HENRY MILNE-EDWARDS. 711 



William's love for our country luust have been very strong-, for it had 

 resisted a severe test, he having been imprisoned by the Imperial 

 police for seven years for aiding in the escape of some Englishmen 

 incarcerated at Bruges. As soon as he was released, in 1814, he went 

 to Paris to live, and reclaimed for his son the benefits of the law which 

 recognized him as a French citizen. 



Meanwhile, owing to his captivity, he had not been able to conduct 

 the early education of his son Henry; this was directed by a brother 

 24 years older, and named William, after his father. This William 

 Edwards also has become prominent among the physiologists of his 

 time. He is one of the founders of the Ethnological Society of Paris, 

 and has left some interesting ex}>eriments as a memorial. There is no 

 doubt that by his example and the bent of his mind he exercised a great 

 influence on the vocation of Henry. It is said that the latter, having 

 received as a gift Buffonh Hisfori/ of Animals^ attempted to analyze it 

 at the age of 11 years, the first indication of that inquiring spirit which 

 at a later period constantly incited his mind to new discoveries. 



Reared in ease, married at the age of 23 to an amiable and distin- 

 guished lady. Miss Laura Trezel, the daughter of a colonel who after 

 ward became general and minister of war, it would appear that Henry 

 Edwards under such circumstances need never have been called upon 

 to expose himself to danger in the pursuit of the sciences. In the 

 beginning of his career, if he took a diploma as doctor of medicine it 

 was j)robably in consequence of the same i^rincipleby which his father, 

 faithful to the ideas of Rousseau and the eighteenth century, made him 

 learn a manual avocation. Henry lived surrounded by friends of his 

 own age who were well instructed and had inquiring minds like him- 

 self. He was then a rich young lover of art, intereste<l in painting, 

 and above all in music, and we know he retained these fine tastes 

 through life, manifesting them in the soirees he gave to men of letters 

 at the museum. 



During the first years of the Restoration, the French mind, emerging 

 from the long milifary repression of the Empire, took a new flight. 

 Everywhere throughout the country and in all departments, intelligent 

 men grouped together to take possession of the donniin that was 

 enkindled anew to mental effort and liberty. Whilst William Edwards 

 was more particularly allied with the learned physiologists and anat- 

 omists, B^clard, Laennec, Breschet, and Magendie, his brother Henry 

 cultivated the society of physicians and artists. These last he met at 

 the Sorbonne, where the present generation would not be likely to look 

 for such associations. 



This ancient refuge of theologians was at that time appropriated to 

 lodgings for artists and sculjitors, later transformed into laboratories 

 and dissecting rooms, which our times have in their turn torn down 

 and rebuilt on a grander scale for other edu<'ational purposes. Perhaps 

 we may be permitted to cast a parting regret at the old buildings 



