210 Biographical Memoir ofM. Claude Louis RicJiard. 



at every gate ; but the ministers, and even the functionaries 

 down to the lowest degree, were all changed : no one remem- 

 bered that any promises had been made to him. It was a light 

 matter to men whose lives were daily in jeopardy, that a few 

 more cloves had been grown at Cayenne, or that litchis and 

 eugeniae had been propagated there. Scientific discoveries af- 

 fected them still less. Thus M. Richard found that he had 

 spent his time, impaired his health, and sacrificed the small for- 

 tune which he had so laboriously acquired, without any one 

 deigning even to hold out to him any future prospects. There 

 only remained for him to begin again the kind of life to which 

 he had devoted himself at the age of fourteen. 



Natural history perhaps requires in him who gives himself up 

 to it, more study than any other kind of study, not only for 

 confronting the hidden and continual dangers which menace him 

 in his researches, but also for supporting reverses of fortune or 

 neglect. Amid the material equipage without which he can do 

 nothing, the natui-alist is in a manner attached to the soil. That 

 the genius of the poet, the metaphysician, and geometrician, may 

 support itself, and even rise to a higher pitch in solitude and 

 poverty, is easily conceived : their thoughts are independent of 

 the things of this lower world ; but in a science which is found- 

 ed on the inspection and comparison of so many thousands of 

 beings and parts of beings, — in a science whose general propo- 

 sitions are elicited only from the approximation of thousands of 

 particular facts, the finest genius, without numerous subjects of 

 observation, without all that can render observation easy and of 

 daily occurrence, would either be annihilated, or would lose it- 

 self in fantastic and idle theories. Who, then, can be surprised 

 that M. Richard, restrained in his inclinations in childhood by 

 his relatives, — overburdened with labour in his youth, — thwart- 

 ed at Cayenne by a petty despot in all his projects, in the very 

 exercise of the duties which had been prescribed to him, — ne- 

 glected and repelled at Paris by those who ought to have nobly 

 recompensed his services, — should have harboured a misanthropy 

 which only rendered the rest of his career more painful, and de- 

 prived him of the little aid which, with patience and gentleness, 

 he might still have hoped to obtain ? 



TIic more faults men in power commit, the less must be 



