FROM REVOLUTION OF JULY TO DEATH OF THE KING. 185 



from the gratitude he felt towards him for his influence in the 

 direction and development of his mental powers. He alludes 

 to the formation of this friendship as one of the most important 

 events of his life. < You belong,' he writes, ' with Willdenow, 

 G-ay-Lussac, and Arago, to the few men who have left a perma- 

 nent impress upon my mode of thought, and influenced my 

 method of viewing nature.' Although he immediately adds 

 ' to the few (according to my experience) who unite a loveable 

 disposition with scientific attainments,' and although he never 

 forgot, in admiring the talent of his friend, to set a high value 

 upon the nobility of his character and the charm of his manners, 

 it cannot be denied that the irresistible attraction by which 

 he was drawn to intellectual enjoyments and the pursuit of 

 science formed also the bond by which his heart was united 

 in friendship ; it was the operation of the same law that at- 

 tracted his thoughts to the remotest regions of the universe, 

 and guided his affections in the choice of sympathetic friends. 

 His almost prodigal use of the terms ' friend ' and ' dear friend ' 

 arose not so much from the habit of indulging in an exag- 

 gerated warmth of expression, as from the unconscious attrac- 

 tion he felt towards all whom he knew to be engaged with 

 himself in the ennobling task of seeking the intellectual eleva- 

 tion of the human race. To him the history of the world was 

 no other than the history of the human mind : in sympathy 

 with the deepest thinkers of antiquity, knowledge was to him 

 the highest good, and in harmony with the greatest philogb- 

 phers of modern times,, with whose teachings he had been 

 imbued from his earliest youth, morality was the natural out- 

 growth of intelligence. Since his affections could only fully be 

 called out by those who could sympathise in his pursuits, who 

 were either his instructors or his pupils in the school of know- 

 ledge, it was a fortunate circumstance for him that his brother 

 was in every way qualified to be his intellectual companion. 



The friendship between the brothers was in fact limited by 

 their intellectual greatness. Led by the diversity of their 

 natural gifts into opposite paths in the pursuit of knowledge, 

 and alike engrossed with the desire to work out their own 

 peculiar line of thought, they were neither of them conscious 

 of the separating tendency of their emulation, but strove to- 



