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nance expressive of dignity and intelligence. His manners 

 were polite and urbane ; his conversation was rich in in- 

 structive information, frank, engaging, unaffected, and 

 without levity, yet endowed with sufficient vivacity. His 

 information was general and extensive. On most subjects 

 he exercised the discriminating and inventive powers of 

 an original and vigorous mind ; his knowledge was not 

 that of facts merely, or of technical terms, and complex 

 abstraction alone, but of science in its elementary prin- 

 ciples, and of nature in her happiest forms." 



In France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Russia, 

 Switzerland, everywhere that the merits of a good and 

 great Englishman could be eulogized, it was done. 

 Science all over the world had lost its Nestor, and she 

 stinted not the language of universal goodwill toward 

 the memory of one who had drawn the nations together, 

 in a field apart from the sordid struggles of life. His own 

 supremacy was of that character which does not lay 

 its rivals in the dust ; his path through life was strewn 

 with the trophies and triumphs of benevolence. Some- 

 thing like this was the universal estimate of Europe. 



One of the more eloquent of these testimonies to the 

 worth of Sir Joseph Banks is that of Jean Baptiste Biot, 

 the famous physicist. He spent much of his scientific 

 life, in his younger days, in England ; and died in 1862, 

 eighty-eight years of age. This is his memorial of his old 

 friend : 1 



" Que ne puis-je peindre ce que je sentis en voyant pour 

 la premiere fois ce venerable compagnon de Cook ! 

 Illustre par de longs voyages, remarquable par une eten- 

 due d'esprit et par une elevation de sentimens qui le font 

 s'interesser egalement aux progres de toutes les con- 

 naissances humaines, possesseur d'un rang eleve, d'une 

 grande fortune, d'une consideration universelle, Sir 



1 Melanges Scientifiques et Littemires, I, 77. 



