MEMOIR OF PYRAMU3 DE CANDOLLE. 281 



of personal memoirs has always been in proportion to the equality of 

 position between the writers and myself. It is not only on account 

 of the style that the Confessions of Rousseau have met with such 

 success, but because he was neither king nor prince, and most readers 

 could trace certain analogies between his position and their own. The 

 memoirs of Marmontel, of Morellet, and, above all, of Gibbon, enable 

 us to see how a mediocrity of condition causes us to overlook, if I may 

 say so, the mediocrity of incidents and the slenderness of the narra- 

 tive." 



De Candolle had a decided fondness for society, and, as Fontenelle 

 said of Leibnitz, "often amused himself with the ladies, and did not 

 count for lost the time which he gave to their conversation." Qualified 

 to please by the characteristic brilliancy and freshness of his imagi- 

 nation, he was excited in turn by the interest and attention of the 

 sex to clothe the driest and most abstract subjects in those terms of 

 animation and imagery which render the lesson which he improvised 

 at Coppet on the "actual state of botany," for the benefit of such a 

 society, one of the most remarkable resumes of his theory. Of the 

 interest which he inspired the following may serve as an instance : 



Soon after his return to Geneva he was obliged to send back to 

 Spain the beautiful designs of the Flore du Meodque. The author of 

 this Flora, the learned Mocino, exiled from his country by the vio- 

 lence of politics, had saved himself from the storm, bearing, like 

 Camoens, his work in his hands. During his sojourn in France, as 

 he despaired of publishing it, he had confided it to De Candolle, with 

 these words: "It is through you that I shall become celebrated." 

 Recalled to his country, now become more calm and just, he was not 

 willing to return without this Flora of Mexico, one of the most valu- 

 able services which the Spanish government has rendered to science. 

 De Candolle was about to lose these precious and indispensable mate- 

 rials for his great work. At this news Geneva bestirred itself. De 

 Candolle had hardly thought of having more than a few of the rarest 

 of the specimens copied; it was decided to copy for him the entire 

 Flora; more than a hundred ladies took part in the task, which was 

 completely executed in ten days. m 



Montesquieu has said "that he never knew a chagrin which an 

 hour's reading had not dissipated." De Candolle might have said as 

 much of society; he not only relaxed himself therein, but his genius 

 acquired new animation and vigor. From the first of his residence 

 at Paris he had had the good fortune to reunite himself with several 

 friends, natives, like himself, of French Switzerland. The family for 

 which J. J. Rousseau had written his Letters on Botany, was naturally 

 the first to appreciate De Candolle. The head of that family, Ben- 

 jamin Delassert, joined to the care of vast commercial enterprises an 

 enthusiastic love for botany. This taste was the occasion of the 

 closest friendship between him and De Candolle, and it might be 

 here that the latter caught that ai dor for the public good which led 

 him to devote himself to active public services. A member of the 

 Philanthropic Society, of a special commission for the hospitals, oue 

 of the founders of the Society for the Encouragement of National In- 



