Documents in Commemoration of Baron Cuvier. 307 



ress, and introduced into the details of its administration his wonted 

 activity and method. Called to cooperate 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 requetes, 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 minutiae 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, seemed 

 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 as a 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 ; 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 morhidezza in statues, he pro- 

 duced in a superior manner in his anatomical drawings. 



