LOUIS AGASSIZ 29 



always around Agassiz, whose intimacy 

 with both father and mother is charm- 

 ing. "I have my evening service and 

 talk silently with you, believing that at 

 that hour you also do not forget your 

 Louis, who thinks always of you," he 

 writes from the university to his father ; 

 and the watchful solicitude of both 

 parents, with the high ideal of character 

 which they always take for granted as 

 both his and theirs, should melt any 

 reader. But, though their sympathy 

 was constant and intelligent, they had 

 little or no technical understanding of 

 his work. For Braun, on the other 

 hand, all the influences at home made 

 as distinctly toward research as did any- 

 thing at Munich. His father's profes- 

 sion, indeed, was not scientific he was 

 postmaster-general of the Duchy of 

 Baden but the elder Braun was more 

 than an amateur. He owned some valu- 

 able collections, especially in mineral- 

 ogy ; and one whole wing of his house 



