290 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



wide as ever, embracing all the lovers of botany in our day, 

 to none of whom can the name of De Candolle be indifferent. 

 The memoirs portray not so much the botanist as the man. 

 Indeed, the perusal was rather disappointing to us in the for- 

 mer regard. We expected to get fresh glimpses of his mind 

 at work upon the problems of the time, and to watch the rise 

 and development of the ideas which brought him fame. That 

 could be had, however, only from letters, diaries, or other con- 

 temporary records : these are only reminiscences. On this 

 account, too, and perhaps because the record was made with 

 only a dim and distant view to publication, the narrative 

 somehow has not all the vivacity and sprightliness, nor the 

 ready flow of language, nor the affluence of anecdote, which 

 those who personally knew the writer would have expected. 

 There are, however, many favorable specimens of De Can- 

 dolle's powers of delineation, and some amusing anecdotes or 

 interesting recollections of distinguished savans and others. 



The family of De Candolle (to retain the style of orthogra- 

 phy which is kept up at Geneva, in which the De is written 

 as a substantial part of the name) is an old and noble one in 

 the Provence ; and a branch of it, reaching Naples in the thir- 

 teenth century in the suite of the Anjou princes, flourished 

 there, under a name gradually changed from Candola to Cal- 

 dora, down to the middle of the sixteenth century. Augustin- 

 Pyramus De Candolle derived one of his baptismal names 

 from his ancestor, Pyramus de Candolle, who, becoming prot- 

 estant, fled from Provence to Geneva in the year 1591, fol- 

 lowing an uncle who had already been established there for 

 thirty or forty years. Augustin was the name of his father, 

 in his earlier days a Genevan banker, a member of the state 

 council, military syndic, and, about the time of the outbreak 

 of the French Revolution, Premier Syndic of the little repub- 

 lic. Displaced by an earlier coup d'etat just as he was about 

 to enter upon the duties of this office, he had retired into the 

 country just in time to escape the worst perils of the woful 

 imitation at Geneva of the reign of terror, in July, 1794, al- 

 though he was condemned to death for contumacy, and his 

 property in the city for a time sequestrated. The rest of his 



