212 Memoir of Charles Alexander Lesueur. 



placed him in that state of independence, which is the cardinal 

 object of every honorable mind. 



At length the inclinations of Mr. Lesueur were subjected to a 

 severe trial. After a residence of nine years in Philadelphia, for- 

 tunate in a good state of health, happy in an extensive circle of 

 acquaintance, who esteemed and honored him, with active em- 

 ployment for his vigorous intellect and his felicitous pencil, — he 

 was induced by the urgent solicitations of Mr. Maclure, to join 

 the settlement of Socialists at New Harmony, on the Wabash, 

 in the state of Indiana. It was a sense of duty alone which 

 governed him in this determination. If his tastes, if his feel- 

 ings had been respected, he would have been permitted to 

 remain where his talents had an appropriate field for exertion, 

 and would not have been constrained to forego all the advant- 

 ages of a well regulated society, for those imaginary benefits 

 to be derived from a condition of association, which had never 

 been subjected to the test of experience. The company of Mr. 

 Thomas Say, at New Harmony, tended to reconcile Lesueur to 

 his lot ; and to mitigate that aversion which the discordant ele- 

 ments of the community could not fail to provoke. The two 

 naturalists often made excursions together; and found in the 

 solitudes of the wilderness those consolations which spring from 

 a congeniality of tastes and pursuits. But the attachments of 

 friendship were again destined to be severed. In October, 1834, 

 Mr. Say ended his days ; and this deprivation was the more 

 painful to Lesueur, as it seemed to presage the termination of all 

 the plans of scientific enterprise which he had fondly cherished 

 since his residence in the Western hemisphere. 



A journey down the Mississippi to New Orleans, served for a 

 while to divert his thoughts from their gloomy forebodings, but 

 failed to suppress them. A return to his native country became 

 the subject of his meditations; still there were difficulties in the 

 way, which, for a time, could not be well surmounted. He retraced 

 his steps, therefore, to New Harmony, and engaged anew in his 

 favorite occupations ; but the charm was broken ; and he saw no 

 relief for his harrassed mind, but by abandoning a situation which 

 promised advantages that resulted in disappointment and sorrow. 

 In the year 1837 Mr. Lesueur bade a final adieu to the Wabash 

 and directed his course to New Orleans. There he embarked in 

 a vessel bound to France : and after a prosperous passage, the 

 high coasts of Normandy, the remembrances of happy days, were 

 visible in the horizon. It is for him who has long been a sojourner 

 in distant lands, to judge of the feelings of one who revisits his 

 native country, after an absence of two and twenty years. The 

 heart of Lesueur was formed of the softest mould ; and when 

 the turrets and steeples of his beloved Havre greeted his view, 

 his emotions, expressed by his tears, showed that time had neither 

 diminished his patriotism, nor chilled the sensibility of his soul. 



