LOUIS AGASSIZ 109 



last building for a short visit to Europe 

 his first and only return. He had 

 been in America thirteen years as 

 long as he had lived in Neueh&teL He 

 had left home famous indeed, but unsuc- 

 cessful in all practical affairs : he came 

 back laden with honours and free from 

 debt. It was but a flying visit. All his 

 time on the Continent was spent with 

 his mother, with only two days for 

 Alexander Braun and a week in scien- 

 tific Paris. Then in the autumn of 1859 

 he returned to Cambridge, to find the 

 Museum building well under way. 



The administration of a great Museum 

 had been for half his lifetime one of 

 Agassiz's day-dreams. He had seen 

 enough of the wasted opportunities and 

 lack of organisation in many great 

 museums. The art of managing collec- 

 tions to the best advantage is as modern 

 as the sister profession of the librarian ; 

 and it is hardly a boast to say that both 

 have been chiefly cisatlantic. As in 



