458 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



far as his social and personal relations were 

 concerned. The college was then on a smaller 

 scale than now, but upon its list of professors 

 were names which would have given distinc- 

 tion to any university. In letters, there were 

 Longfellow and Lowell, and Felton, the ge- 

 nial Greek scholar, of whom Longfellow him- 

 self wrote, "In Attica thy birthplace should 

 have been." In science, there were Peirce, 

 the mathematician, and Dr. Asa Gray, then 

 just installed at the Botanical Garden, and 

 Jeffries Wyman, the comparative anatomist, 

 appointed at about the same time with Agas- 

 siz himself. To these we might almost add, 

 as influencing the scientific character of Har- 

 vard, Dr. Bache, the Superintendent of the 

 Coast Survey, and Charles Henry Davis, the 

 head of the Nautical Almanac, since the kindly 

 presence of the former was constantly invoked 

 as friend and counselor in the scientific de- 

 partments, while the latter had his residence 

 in Cambridge, and was as intimately associated 

 with the interests of Harvard as if he had 

 been officially connected with the university. 



A more agreeable set of men, or one more 

 united by personal relations and intellectual 

 aims, it would have been difficult to find. In 

 connection with these names, those of Prescott, 



