90 LOUIS AGASSIZ 



was always a Harvard professor ; and 

 in spite of his wanderings he stands 

 identified with Boston at the time when 

 Boston touched her highest mark. This 

 was the time of the famous Saturday 

 Club, when Agassiz, Emerson, Felton, 

 Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Motley, 

 and their peers met round one table ; 

 when Bache and Henry were well-known 

 figures in Cambridge ; the time which 

 made Lowell, afterward a darling guest 

 of London,, look back across the ocean 

 from St. James's, and say that he 

 had never known such society as in 

 Boston and Cambridge. Neither before 

 nor since has Boston been so much of a 

 capital city. She was much smaller 

 then than now, and her average man 

 stood higher. Public life was still in 

 good odour. Her merchants had gained 

 their wealth at a time when the struggle 

 for wealth went by personal prowess 

 rather than by the machine gun ; and 

 they often knew the quarter-deck as well 



