282 MEMOIR OF PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 



dustry, &c, he carried into these functions the same fervor as into 

 his studies; and this he called joining a practical life to his theorizing 

 life. "I have no doubt," he says, in the memoirs before cited, "of 

 the utility of the sciences in general for society, taken in the mass; 

 but it has always seemed to me that I owed, as an individual, some 

 more direct service to my cotemporaries." And this way of thinking 

 seems to have formed the rule of his life. Elected, at Geneva, on 

 three successive occasions, a member of the sovereign council, and, 

 as one might say, an obligatory member of every commission of pub- 

 lic utility, he found time and activity for all. 



The friends of his youth were those of his entire life. It would be 

 difficult to say in which of the three cities where he had lived, Mont- 

 pellier, Paris, and Geneva, he counted the most and truest friends. 

 Two of them, Desfontaines and Cuvier, preceded him to the tomb; and 

 the names of these two may stand as a eulogy for all the rest. For 

 his tastes he manifested the same constancy as for his friendships. 

 He began with making verses, and he continued to make them to the 

 last. But having discovered, in good time, that poetry, and especially 

 French poetry, demands great labor, and all the forces of his mind 

 being otherwise employed, he made verses only for his friends, and 

 never published any of them. 



His childhood had been delicate, but at the age of fifteen or sixteen 

 his constitution underwent a happy revolution. From that time his 

 body seemed formed, like his mind, for great labors. During more 

 than forty years he preserved a sound health in spite of excessive 

 fatigues. In 1835 he was seized with a violent malady, from which 

 he recovered only to return to his occupations. Since then he has 

 published, perhaps, the most difficult and incomparably the most ex- 

 tensive part of his great work. His fine genius seemed restored to 

 us entire, but his health was never re-established. He died Septem- 

 ber 9, 1841. 



To the happiness due to success, and still more to assiduous employ- 

 ment, he joined the yet more precious happiness of an honorable 

 alliance, contracted in 1808, which constituted the charm of his life. 

 He has left a son worthy of bearing his name and of continuing his 

 renown. His last words were: " I die without disquietude; my son 

 will finish my work." 



Such was the life of De Candolle, and such the nature of those 

 great works which mark a new epoch in the progress of botany. 

 Tournefort had constituted the science; Linnaeus had given it a lan- 

 guage; the two Jussieus had founded its method; it remained to open 

 to botany the study of the intimate laws of life; and this has been 

 done by De Candolle. He is the only one, since Linmeus, who has 

 embraced all the parts of this science with an equal genius. 



Considered as a professor he stands without a rival; botany had 

 never before appeared with so much eclat. The perspicuity of his 

 ideas, the soundness of his method, the grace of his elocution, all 

 conspired to captivate and reward attention. When explaining facts, 

 he seemed to communicate the art of judging them; when detailing 

 observations, he appeared to lay open the art of observing; and, as 



