8 Memoirs of DeCandolle. 
that he found himself in pees to have it without contest when it be- 
came permanent and well paid. ese first steps being taken, all places 
fell to him as of themselves, and we saw him successively Professor of the 
coles centrales, of the Collége de France, at the Jardin des Plantes, In- 
spector, then Councillor, then Chancellor of the University, Councillor of 
Btate, Baron, Peer of France, &e. &c. His talent, his aptitude for know- 
ing and doing everything, made him skillful in every function ; he brought 
to it pees order, facility for administration, a knowledge of details 
and of the whole, a sincere ah ' justic —— a disinterestedness which 
caused him ees be noticed and admired. 
Cuvier might justly be comnpated to Haller, whom he resembled as 
much as the difference of nation and time would allow. Both astonished 
by their extraordinary capacity for learning, knowing equally well natu- 
ral and historical science, greedy of positive ; facts on all subjects, endowed 
with wonderful memor and a remarkable spirit of order, capable of great 
Jabor, and yet gifted with much facility. But at the side of these admi- 
rable qualities it might be observed that neither had an inventive genius; 
they observed facts well, but never thought to unite them by a theory 
that would divine or discover others. , Their characters cor responded even 
outside of science: both loved power, and sacrificed precious time to the 
desire of political advancement ;. both loved reading to a passion, even at 
the hours destined ordinarily for meals and domestic intercourse; both 
were cold and haughty in conversation with those who inspired them with 
no interest, piguante and profound to those whom they thought worthy 
of it; finally both had a certain contempt for that class of ideas called 
liberal, and held to the aristocratic party. The great size of their heads 
e them acertain physical resemblance. In one word, it would be dif- 
flout to find two celebrated men more exactly alike, aia the lovers of 
metempsychosis might say, if the epochs would permit, that the soul of 
Haller had aero ithout change into the body of Cuvier. 
me, seall¢: Cuvier was well-nigh perfection. 
Notwithstaning the great difference in our respective views of life and of 
poli cs, n of science in some theoretical hiccahgeote: our intimag 
5 ht episode if fifteen days, during which DeCandolle, to his 
great surprise, had political functions to perform,—being ap- 
cate one of the three he tt of the department of the Lé 
man, in a representation of all the departments of the pi 
Republie, which the First Catal eaited Hacther. —gives us t 
first glimpse of Bonaparte in this narrative; and DeCandolle’ , 
3 iJ 
