LOUIS AGASSIZ. 
THERE is no need to give an abstract of the contents of these 
fascinating volumes,!for everybody is reading them. Most are 
probably wishing for more personal details, especially of the 
American life; but the editorial work is so deftly and delicately 
done, and “the story of an intellectual life marked by rare 
coherence and unity” is so well arranged to tell itself and 
make its impression, that we may thankfully accept what has 
been given us, though the desired “ fullness of personal narra- 
tive” be wanting. 
Twelve years have passed since Agassiz was taken from us. 
Yet to some of us it seems not very long ago that the already 
celebrated Swiss naturalist came over in the bloom of his 
manly beauty to charm us with his winning ways, and inspire 
us with his overflowing enthusiasm, as he entered upon the 
American half of that career which has been so beneficial to 
the interests of natural science. There are not many left of 
those who attended those first Lowell Lectures in the autumn 
of 1846, — perhaps all the more taking for the broken Eng- 
lish in which they were delivered, — and who shared in the 
delight with which, in a supplementary lecture, he more flu- 
ently addressed his audience in his mother-tongue. 
In these earliest lectures he sounded the note of which his 
last public utterance was the dying cadence. For, as this 
biography rightly intimates, his scientific life was singularly 
entire and homogeneous, —if not uninfluenced yet quite un- 
changed by the transitions which have marked the period. In 
a small circle of naturalists, almost the first that was assembled 
to greet him on his coming to this country, and of which the 
writer is the sole survivor, when Agassiz was inquired of as to 
1 “Louis Agassiz, his Life and Correspondence.” (The Andover Re- 
view, January, 1886, p. 39.) 
