IX. 



IN October, 1846, Agassiz arrived in 

 Boston, and at once sought out Mr. 

 John A. Lowell, trustee of the Institute 

 for which he was to give his first course 

 of lectures, entitled "The Plan of 

 Creation. " 



"Never was Agassiz' s power as a 

 teacher or the charm of his personal 

 presence more evident than in his first 

 course of Lowell Lectures. He was 

 unfamiliar with the language. . . . He 

 would often have been painfully em- 

 barrassed but for his own simplicity of 

 character. Thinking only of his sub- 

 ject and never of himself, when a criti- 

 cal pause came, he patiently waited for 

 the missing word, and- rarely failed to 

 find a phrase which was expressive, if 

 not technically correct. . . . His foreign 

 accent rather added a charm to his 

 address ; and the pauses in which he 

 seemed to ask the forbearance of the 



