184 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
submitted to such competent critics as Professor Arnold 
Guyot, Longfellow, and Horace E. Scudder, as well as to 
Agassiz’s cousin, Auguste Mayor, who lived at Neuchatel. 
The following letters written at intervals while the book 
was preparing are of interest here. 
TO FRAU CECILE METTENIUS 
Cambridge, May 15, 1876 
... | THINK you would be disappointed in [a ‘“‘Biog- 
raphy,” should I write one]. I should be especially 
careful not to give it a controversial character. 
I should let facts, dates, and the completeness and 
coherence of the man’s whole intellectual life tell its 
own story. Time would do the rest, and claim and 
assertion only awaken counter-claims and counter- 
assertions. Another thing will disappoint you, I 
think. I believe we should not be in haste about this 
biography; as a general thing I believe biographies 
are written too soon and have a certain crudeness 
in consequence. ... I think it will be better to wait 
till things take their true proportions. Do not think 
that this conviction will delay my work in the least. 
I give to it every day and hour I have at my command; 
but to tell the truth it is my earnest hope, my prayer 
before all other prayers almost, that I may leave 
it for some one else to publish. . . . There has been 
a great deal of preliminary work — thousands of 
letters to look over, throw away, sort and arrange, 
for Agassiz’s correspondence had long since become 
too voluminous for his management, and he had 
taken the habit of putting away his papers with- 
