THE BIOGRAPHY OP AGASSIZ 187 



the fitting time for publication comes I might be out 

 of hearing of discussion or criticism. 



The following letter was written not long after the 

 death of Alexander Braun. 



TO FRAU CECILE METTENIUS 



Cambridge, November 17 [1877] 



... I FEEL an ease and pleasure in writing to you 

 that seems to me like the growth of an old and 

 intimate relation rather than the correspondence of 

 people who have never met. Is it perhaps that I 

 have been, as it were, educated to love and revere 

 your father? Uncle Louis talked to me so often both 

 of his character and his intellect with such affec- 

 tionate respect. I seem to hear him still, for only 

 two or three days ago in reading over one of his 

 early letters to his mother (1832) from Paris I came 

 upon this passage: ' Tu ne saurais te faire une juste 

 idee de la puissance et de la consolation que me pro- 

 cur ent mes relations avec Alexandre, il est si bon et 

 en meme temps si instruit et si eleve dans ses idees 

 que c'est pour moi un vrai bonheur qu'il soit mon 

 ami." So he felt it to be to the end. I only wish he 

 could have had the happiness of being more con- 

 stantly with him. That spiritual elevation of which 

 you speak in your sister seems to me so like him. 

 It is lovely to be with people who seem to have 

 by instinct as the pure gift of God what the rest 

 of us are fighting for and winning only by the hard 

 experience and discipline of life. Such a nature is a 



