BARON CUVIER. 93 



v*hile reading or speaking in public ; his voice could be 

 teard every where without being pitched in too elevated a 

 ;ey, his articulation was remarkably clear and distinct with- 

 >ut being affected, so that foreigners found it easier to com- 

 wehend him than most of the French orators, and there 

 yas a tone of feeling, a certain play of countenance, which 

 carried his auditors with him in all the sentiments he tried 

 ;o inspire. There was nothing in the least declamatory or 

 theatrical, in order to arrest the attention ; but his melodi- 

 ous tones, his elegant turn of expression, and natural grace 

 of manner, gave a charm to the shortest phrases. These 

 last perfections were so much the more remarkable, as em- 

 phasis was the fashion in academical discourses when he 

 commenced his career, and it was like creating a new school 

 to return to nature. 



I now resume the description of the eloges, which form 

 three volumes in octavo ; and, as several remain which 

 have only been published for the members of the Institute, 

 it is to be hoped that, ere long, a fourth volume will be added. 

 The first contains, previous to the eloges, " Reflections on 

 the Progress of Science, and its influence on Society," read 

 at the first annual sitting of the four academies. I must 

 stop here to cite a most eloquent sketch from it, which leads 

 us from the first helpless state of man to his present power- 

 ful condition, for it will give to my readers a pr^of of M. 

 Cuvier's power of bringing important truths before us by 

 one luminous flash from his pen. 



* " Jete faible et nu a la surface du globe, 1'homme pa- 



* Man, who had been thrown on the surface of the globe in a state of 

 feebleness and nakedness, would appear to have been created for inevita- 

 ble destruction : evils assailed him on all sides, and the remedies for them 

 appeared to be hidden from him ; but he had been endowed with talents 

 for their discovery. The first savages gathered nourishing fruits and 

 wholesome roots in the forests, and thus conquered their most pressing 

 wants. The first shepherds perceived that the stars followed a regular 

 course, and by them directed their steps across the desert. Such was the 

 origin of physical and mathematical sciences. 



No sooner had the genius of man ascertained that it was possible to 

 combat nature by her own means, than it no longer rested ; it watched her 

 incessantly, and continually gained new conquests over her, each marked 

 by some melioration in the state of society. Then succeeded, without 

 interruption, those^meditating minds, which, being the faithful depositaries 

 of acquired doctrines, were constantly occupied in connecting them, in 

 vivifying the one by the help of the other, and which have led us, in less 



