THE BIOGRAPHY OF AGASSIZ 187 
the fitting time for publication comes I might be out 
of hearing of discussion or criticism. 
The following letter was written not long after the 
death of Alexander Braun. 
TO FRAU CECILE METTENIUS 
Cambridge, November 17 [1877] 
... 1 FEEL an ease and pleasure in writing to you 
that seems to me like the growth of an old and 
intimate relation rather than the correspondence of 
people who have never met. Is it perhaps that I 
have been, as it were, educated to love and revere 
your father? Uncle Louis talked to me so often both 
of his character and his intellect with such affec- 
tionate respect. I seem to hear him still, for only 
two or three days ago in reading over one of his 
early letters to his mother (1832) from Paris I came 
upon this passage: ‘Tu ne saurais te faire une juste 
idée de la puissance et de la consolation que me pro- 
curent mes relations avec Alexandre, —il est si bon et 
en méme temps si instruit et st élevé dans ses idées 
que c’est pour mot un vrai bonheur qu’il soit mon 
ami.” So he felt it to be to the end. I only wish he 
could have had the happiness of being more con- 
stantly with him. That spiritual elevation of which 
you speak in your sister seems to me so like him. 
It is lovely to be with people who seem to have 
by instinct as the pure gift of God what the rest 
of us are fighting for and winning only by the hard 
experience and discipline of life. Such a nature is a 
