vi MEMOIR. 



as this was resorted to by Cuvier, and a matrimonial alliance was formed 

 by him in 1803. The lady whom he selected as his partner for life, was 

 the widow of M. Duvaucel, a fermier general, who fell a sacrifice to the 

 fury of the revolutionary rabble in 1794. The circumstances under 

 which he chose Mrs. Duvaucel for his wife, are at once decisive of the 

 disinterested feelings which accompanied the resolution ; for the calamity to 

 which her late husband had become a victim extended to his fortunes, 

 and only a wreck of what she once was fell to the lot of Cuvier. Nay, 

 he saw, that by the alliance a burden would be placed upon his industry; 

 for the widow had under her protection four children, the fruit of her 

 first marriage. But though these accompaniments formed very powerful 

 objections, as well they might, to a union of his destinies, on the part of 

 Cuvier, with this female, still he saw in her mind and feelings an 

 abundance of what was calculated to make him forget those objections. 



The four children of the former marriage met with a very various des- 

 tiny. One was assassinated during the retreat of the French army from 

 Portugal, in the memorable campaign of 1809: a second, who had fol- 

 lowed the example of his illustrious step-father, and encountered perils 

 and fatigues in pursuit of science, exhausted his vital powers by a vain 

 attempt to defy the deleterious influence of an uncongenial climate : he 

 died in Madras. The third of the sons of Madame Duvaucel is still 

 living, an officer of customs at Bordeaux ; and his sister, the last of the 

 children, performed the amiable duties of nurse to the illustrious object 

 of all the anxious cares of his family, and remains as the chief source of 

 consolation to the old age of her mother. Madame Cuvier, besides the 

 tliree sons and daughter just spoken of, had four children more whilst 

 married to her last husband, but, unhappily, both the parents survived 

 them all. There is no one, therefore, now in existence, to whom we can 

 look as the hereditary successor of Cuvier's peculiar intellect; that great, 

 and to his fellow-creatures, most beneficial endowment, ceased with his 

 life-breath, and is buried, we fear, with him in his grave. 



in the mean time, as a public man, Cuvier was the object of fresh ho- 

 nours, the testimonies of the increasing esteem which his labours had 

 yarned. In 1809, Napoleon appointed him to the office of Councillor of 

 the Imperial University, which that emperor had created; and, in this 

 character, Cuvier was entrusted with the establishment of new seminaries 

 of instruction in that branch of the French empire which, for a season, 

 consisted of several Italian states. The principles which he laid down for 

 the constitution and government of these asylums of science, receive their 

 best panegyric from the circumstance that they were perpetuated by the 

 succeeding governments, who could not have been interested in the pre- 

 servation of national memorials so adverse to their own interest. 



