Documents in Commemoration of Baron Cuvier. 307 
ress, and introduced into the details of its administration his wonted 
activity and method. Called to codperate in the direction of pub- 
lic instruction, first as an inspector of the University, then as a mem- 
ber of the council of public instruction, as chancellor, as head of the 
several faculties, he was through all distinguished by the same quali- 
ties: his report on the primary instruction of Holland is a monument 
of his solicitude for popular education, and all those who have traced 
him through the higher classes of study, know how much good he 
has effected and how much evil he has prevented ! ! This latter bene- 
fit, less known than most others, always springs from an elevated 
mind, which disdains the applauses of the day for the reality and 
utility of the future. Gradually introduced into the field of civil 
administration, maitre des requétes, counsellor of state, president of 
the section of the Interior, director of protestant worship, and finally 
peer of France, he traversed the circle of administrative functions, 
except those of Censor, which he nobly refused when offered to his 
acceptance. He evinced, in all these appointments, that superiority 
for which no one contended with him in science: he became as fa- 
-miliar with the laws, regulations, and even the minutiz of official acts, 
as with the body and details of science. His colleagues, wholly de- 
voted to the business of administration, were every day astonished at 
his wonderful capacity. 
That head, morally as great as it was physically capacious, oes 
to be the depositary of all human knowledge. He had, throughout his 
life, read much, observed much, and forgotten nothing. The gigantic 
memory sustained and directed by a severe logic and a rare sagacity, 
was the principal basis of his immense and successful labors. That 
memory was remarkable, in a special manner, for all that has relation 
to forms, considered in the most extensive sense of the term. The 
figure of an animal seen in reality or in a drawing, was never forgot- 
ten, and served asa standard of comparison for all analogous ob- 
jects: the sight of a chart, of the plan of a city, was sufficient to 
Preserve his intuitive knowledge of places; and amidst so many fac- 
ulties, that memory which may be called graphic seemed the most 
evident. He was consequently an able draughtsman 5 he seized forms 
with justness and rapidity, and had the art of giving by the pencil an 
appearance of the tissue of organs in a manner suitable to his pur- 
' pose. What the Italian sculptures call morbidezza in statues, he tei 
duced in a superior manner in his anatomical drawings. 
