172 MEMOIRS OF 



One amusing mark of respect was a source of great enter- 

 tainment, and for its drollery alone do I offer it to the reader. 

 During the absence of his valet, M. Cuvier sent for a barber 

 to shave him. The operation being finished, he offered to 

 pay the requisite sum ; but the enlightened operator, who 

 happened to be a Gascon, bowed, and positively refused the 

 money, saying, with his comic accent, " he was too much 

 honoured, by having shaved the greatest man of the age, 

 to accept any recompense." Hardly surpressing a smile, 

 M. Cuvier felt bound to give him the honour to its full ex- 

 tent, and engaged him to perform his function every day 

 while he remained in London. It is scarcely necessary to 

 add, that the barber, in a short time, felt it a still higher 

 duty to consult prudence rather than empty honour, and 

 pocketed the amount due for the exercise of his calling. 



Although occasionally subject to sight ailments, the 

 health of M. Cuvier, generally speaking, was good, and 

 his carriage was used by him more as a saving of time than 

 a matter of necessity; therefore the sudden summons he 

 received to quit his earthly labours, was an event for which 

 his friends and his country were not prepared. Never were 

 his intellectual faculties more brilliant; never was his great 

 mind more fully possessed of that clearness, that compre- 

 hensiveness, which so peculiarly marked it, than at the 

 time of his seizure. His life of temperance and rectitude, 

 at the age of sixty-two, had preserved the corporeal exist- 

 ence unimpaired, and also contributed to the perfection of 

 his mental vigour; for more than forty years he had been 

 unremittingly labouring to perfect his great views in science 

 and legislature ; and concerning the former he was about 

 to give to the world the results of his researches and reflec- 

 tions. " His intention was to review all his works, and put 

 them on a footing with the last discoveries, and then to de- 

 duce from them all the consequences, all the general prin- 

 ciples, which appeared to him to emanate from such an as- 

 semblage of facts, though he did not think it possible, in 

 the present state of human knowledge to establish a general 

 theory. All .his studies, all his meditations had convinced 

 him of the philosophical principle, that organized beings 

 exist for an end, for a special object: but he did not admit 

 any scientific theory, and with all his energy maintained 



