LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



There is no need to give an abstract of the contents of these 

 fascinating volumes, 1 for everybody is reading them. Most are 

 probably wishing for more personal details, especially of the 

 American life ; but the editorial work is so deftly and delicately 

 done, and " the story of an intellectual life marked by rare 

 coherence and unity "is so well arranged to tell itself and 

 make its impression, that we may thankfully accept what has 

 been given us, though the desired " fullness of personal narra- 

 tive " be wanting. 



Twelve years have passed since Agassiz was taken from us. 

 Yet to some of us it seems not very long ago that the already 

 celebrated Swiss naturalist came over in the bloom of his 

 manly beauty to charm us with his winning ways, and inspire 

 us with his overflowing enthusiasm, as he entered upon the 

 American half of that career which has been so beneficial to 

 the interests of natural science. There are not many left of 

 those who attended those first Lowell Lectures in the autumn 

 of 1846, — perhaps all the more taking for the broken Eng- 

 lish in which they were delivered, — and who shared un the 

 delight with which, in a supplementary lecture, he more flu- 

 ently addressed his audience in his mother-tongue. 



In these earliest lectures he sounded the note of which his 

 last public utterance was the dying cadence. For, as this 

 biography rightly intimates, his scientific life was singularly 

 entire and homogeneous, — if not uninfluenced yet quite un- 

 changed by the transitions which have marked the period. In 

 a small circle of naturalists, almost the first that was assembled 

 to greet him on his coming to this country, and of which the 

 writer is the sole survivor, when Agassiz was inquired of as to 



1 "Louis Agassiz, his Life and Correspondence." (The Andover Re- 

 view, January, 1886, p. 39.) 



