BARON CUVIER. 301 



they had directed their talents, what was tlieir 

 fortune, wliat was their family 5 and wholly 

 free from national jealousy, he alike respected 

 all that were worthy of admiration. He asked 

 questions from a desire to gain information, 

 as if he too were a student ; he was delighted 

 when he found a Scotchman who spoke Celtic ; 

 he questioned all concerning their national in- 

 stitutions and customs ; he conversed with an 

 English lawyer as if he had learned the profes- 

 sion in England ; he knew the progress of public 

 education in every quarter of the globe ; he 

 asked the traveller an infinity of things, well 

 knowing to wliat part of the world he had 

 directed his steps ; and seeming to think that 

 every one was born to afford instruction in some 

 way or other, he elicited information from the 

 humblest individual, who was frequently asto- 

 nished at his interest in what appeared so fami- 

 liar to himself. One thing used particularly to 

 annoy him ; which was, to find an Englishman 

 who could not speak French. It gave him a re- 

 straint of which many have complained, but 

 which, on these occasions, solely arose from a feel- 

 ing of awkwardness on his own part at not being 

 able to converse with his foreign guest. No one 

 ever rendered greater justice to the merit of his 

 predecessors or contemporaries than M. Cuvier. 



