152 MEMOIRS OF 



ployed for him, the alteration was done in his imagination 

 as soon as commanded ; and thus in advance himself, he 

 unceasingly inspected their labours, and hastened them in 

 their tasks. He would walk along the scene of operation, 

 exclaiming every instant, " Depechez vous, done," (make 

 haste, then.) and impeding all celerity by the rapidity of his 

 orders. Perhaps, at the moment of pasting the paper on 

 the walls, he brought in a pile of engravings to be put on 

 afterwards, and which, in fact, were often nailed up before 

 the paste was dry. But although he was perfectly happy 

 while thus engaged, he could not be alone, and, fetching 

 his daughter-in-law back as often as she escaped from him, 

 lie associated her in all his contrivances. On unpacking a 

 portrait of this ever ready companion by Sir Thomas Law- 

 rence, and sent over from England, he happened to be pre- 

 sent ; and, in order to prevent him from seeing it by degrees, 

 and so destroying the effect, she was obliged to hold her 

 hands over his eyes, or he could not have resisted the desire 

 to look. When he sent a commission to this country, 

 every succeeding letter brought an inquiry as to its execu- 

 tion, or a recommendarion to use zealous despatch. I must 

 add, that the thanks were as often repeated as the injunc- 

 tions. It is, perhaps, a curious inconsistency, that a man 

 who submitted to such tedious and minute labour as he had 

 all his life undergone, should be thus impatient when the 

 activity of others was in question ; but it must be recollected, 

 that he found very few who would work as he did ; and 

 that, while so working, his mind was absorbed by every 

 step which was taken to ensure the wished-for result, and 

 had no time to bound over the space between thought and 

 execution. " M. Cuvier possessed in the highest degree, 

 that patience which has been said to be always necessary 

 for the discovery of some important truth, and which, ac- 

 cording to Buffon, and according to M. Cuvier himself, con- 

 stitutes the genius of a well-ordered mind. No labour, how- 

 ever minute, irritated him, when he believed it to be requi- 

 site for the attainment of his object ; and this patience was 

 really a virtue in that man, whose blood would boil at a 

 false reasoning, or a sophism, who could not listen to a few 

 pages of a book that taught nothing, or a work that bore the 

 marks of prejudice or passion, without feeling the greatest 



